


The Lowing

by deniigiq



Series: Selkie Verse [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Drama, Fae & Fairies, Family Dynamics, Gen, Ireland, M/M, Magic, NOT OMEGAVERSE, Quests, Selkies, Team Red, Witches, let Cap travel in peace, mild violence, tw: discussion of suicidal behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:01:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 56,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22619797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “Are there a lot offaein Ireland?” Peter asked. “Are there morefaein Ireland than there are in New York? Can I see them?”Sergeant Barnes’s grin went wider as Cap threw up his hands and declared that he was going upstairs to brood and if anyone needed him, he’d be locking himself in a trunk.“So many more than you could ever understand, human-child,” Sergeant Barnes said.(Matt and company return to the Island.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, Margaret Murdock & Matt Murdock, Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Karen Page, May Parker & Peter Parker
Series: Selkie Verse [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558045
Comments: 171
Kudos: 474





	1. back to hills of green

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be posting the next several pieces as chapters in this one since they will follow the same arc ❤
> 
> POVs will shift, just as they did in **Whispering Seas**

Matt was getting his coat back!

Matt was going to turn into a seal again!

Matt was going to go play in the bay with Foggy while taking his crusade to give MJ nightmares up to the next level!

It was all very exciting.

Johnny thought it was exciting, too. Peter could feel his heart fluttering around in his chest and it made him smile and that made May keep reminding him that he wasn’t supposed to smile when he got his passport picture taken.

Johnny agreed and said that when he’d gotten _his_ passport picture taken, his sister had bullied him hardcore so that that wouldn’t be a problem for him.

“Did it work?” Peter asked him.

Johnny gave him a face that said that that was a stupid question.

The Walgreens guy told Peter to stand in front of the white pull-down background by the staffroom door.

“Don’t smile,” he said.

Matt was getting his coat back, which meant that he was going to Ireland, which meant that _they_ were going to Ireland.

Peter wasn’t sure why at first, but Matt had come all the way to Queens to talk to May about it. He’d done his nervous fidget the whole time he was in the kitchen until May told Peter and Johnny to go dry roses in the shed.

Johnny whispered to Peter that Matt’s selkie energy was all over the place when they got there.

Matt had left shortly after that, though, and May hadn’t said anything about the whole thing for several days until she announced out of nowhere that she and Peter were taking a trip to visit an elder witch in Ireland over Spring Break.

She then said that Matt had informed her the couple of days previous that he was about to take up a Task.

A big one.

Peter had heard of Tasks before. They were very old-fashioned. He hadn’t realized that people still did them. But May explained that in Ireland, Tasks were things that normal humans did to become Heroes, no—not the kind of hero that Peter was thinking of.

Johnny interrupted at that point to flail around, all worked up about heroes. Apparently, he’d heard of them. He buzzed and danced a bit before coming back and wrapping himself around Peter and purring. He told May that Peter was going to be a Hero one day.

May looked like she didn’t love the idea, but covered it up with a funny smile and said, “maybe?”

“So Matt’s gonna become a Hero?” Peter clarified, petting at Johnny’s hair to keep him from further outbursts.

“Mmm,” May said in a high-pitched tone.

That didn’t bode well.

“Is he okay? Why’d he talk to you and not me? Is someone stalking him again?” Peter asked.

“No, baby, nothing like that,” May said. “What’s going on is just very…personal for him.”

Ah.

That sounded like Matt.

Everything was personal until it inevitably boiled out and he stormed around, hitting people and fuming about it.

“Is he sick?” Peter tried next.

“Is he really that close to being a Hero?” Johnny asked. “Is this his final step?”

No, May said. It wasn’t anything like that. It was the reverse.

Matt, she said very calmly, had decided not to be human anymore.

Everything settled way down in the room.

“What do you mean?” Peter asked. “Matt likes being human. He’s good at it. He’s—can he be a hero if he’s not a human?”

Johnny went quiet and pulled himself up straight. His eyes seemed dark and empty all of the sudden.

“He can’t go back,” he said.

“He’s going to try,” May said. “And he needs help.”

Johnny shook his head.

“He’s going to die,” he said.

Peter socked him in the arm. Breathing had gotten hard out of nowhere and a loud ringing sound screeched through his ears. Johnny recoiled and went on the defensive.

“Don’t say that—don’t you _ever_ say that,” Peter told him. “Matt’s my friend. He’s saved my life a million times. He’s my _friend_ , Johnny.”

“Boys,” May said over them. “Calm down. Take a breath. The reason Matt told me and not you is because he knows how dangerous it is for him to step back after stepping forward. He knows what he’s getting into, Johnny. But Peter’s right. Matt’s our friend and he’s helped us numerous times. So it’s our turn to help him.”

The tension dropped a bit, to the point where Peter and Johnny could drop the stiff shoulders and step towards each other again.

“What’s happening?” Peter asked May.

Wilson Fisk was an asshole and a fuckhead most days of the week but hearing now that he was gathering _fae_ to do his dirty work made Peter decide that he was allowed to be an asshole and a fuckhead _every_ day of the week.

Matt was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Wilson Fisk was targeting him, yet again, but this time, he was branching out from harassing Matt and his friends and family to harassing Matt’s people, that is, the _fae_ in general.

That was pretty fucked up.

And it was even more fucked up that Matt had been cornered enough to have decided to make a deal with Wilson Fisk.

Matt.

Human-Matt. Was going to make a deal. With Wilson Fisk.

That was a recipe for disaster. Peter could see it and he was a highschool sophomore.

But Matt wouldn’t hear anything otherwise when Peter tried to tell him that he didn’t need to do that. That he had people to help him take Wilson Fisk down as a human. He didn’t have to risk his life like this.

Matt said that he’d made the decision with the support of those close to him, so he was doing this. He had to. If he didn’t, then Fisk would just keep kidnapping _fae_ and he’d start using them to hurt even more humans than he ever had before.

Moreover, Fisk was fixated on him at the moment, and that was good. So long as he kept Fisk’s attention on him, then they’d have time to help the people he’d already snared escape his grasp.

And like.

Peter had just learned about the whole Hero-thing, but if you asked him, this type of endeavor sounded a whole lot like the kind of thing that would get you made into a Hero among Matt’s people. He pointed that out and told Matt that if he just waded through this without giving up his humanity, then he would probably be rewarded with Hero-status.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Peter asked him. “That’s why you became human to begin with, isn’t it?”

Matt sighed.

“Maybe I did,” he said sadly. “But things change, Peter.”

Peter didn’t understand, so he followed Matt around until he broke down and told him. It took a while and some serious work. Matt’s bullshit tolerance was higher than your average guy’s. When he finally broke down and lashed out at Peter, he managed to do it in the horns.

Wade was there and Wade wrangled him back away from Peter and told him to settle down or he’d make him. Matt got mad at that and started fighting harder, until Wade told him to get fucked, he was useless that night.

That made Matt upset, though. He didn’t say it. He never said it. But talk like that really seemed to get to him.

He started to fuck off, but Wade caught him and said sorry. He didn’t mean it like that.

Matt said it didn’t matter.

Wade said it did. They were a team, now, and he’d fucked up. So, sorry.

And it was that that opened the floodgates.

He didn’t want to be human anymore because it hurt, Matt explained in a rush.

It was that simple, in some ways.

He balled his fists tight When Wade asked him cautiously to explain just what ‘hurt’ meant. He said that it was complicated and that he was usually more or less okay for a couple weeks at a time, but selkies normally shifted at least once a week.

Matt didn’t shift at all. He hadn’t since he was fifteen.

That was when he’d given up his coat and without it, he wasn’t able to turn into a seal. Beyond that, nothing else had changed. And that was the horrible part. That was the part that hurt.

Every time he didn’t shift when his body wanted to, his body said ‘fuck you’ and went into convulsions. He described it as a kind of tightness or pressure on every limb and joint. Like when you’ve slept in a bad way for a long time and you were trying to sleep in a good way, except all your muscles and bones still hurt and cramped. Except that no matter how much stretching you did, the pressure—this pulling sensation—never really went away.

He said that his muscles ached and spasmed and cramped for a few days at a time when his body thought he was supposed to shift.

He said that he’d learned to deal with all that, though. It was fine. It was normal to him now.

But that was the thing. If selkies went too long without shifting, then there came a point where they didn’t have control over it anymore. They’d shift regardless of whether they wanted to or not. Hence, the convulsions.

Now, this was basically a non-problem for most selkies because most selkies would rather be seals anyways and shifted multiple times a week.

For Matt, however, it was a problem that happened every month and it was agonizing. He said his instincts panicked. They did things to try to push him towards the sea. They made his body ache and feel super, super dry. They made him constantly want to touch water. They made him hoarser and hoarser until he lost his voice completely and it was usually around then that he took a lot of meds and tried to sleep for a couple days because he said his body would just twist all over itself within hours or days, trying and failing to shift on its own, and it hurt so bad that he would rather not be conscious for it.

Then he’d wake up. And then the whole thing would start all over.

He’d done this every month for nearly fifteen years.

Even Wade didn’t really know what to say to that.

“The _fae_ think I’m stupid and broken,” Matt said quietly with his arms wrapped around himself. “And humans think I’m just flat out broken. And all that’s in the middle of both of those is me feeling sick and broken, so—I just don’t fit anywhere. And it hurts. It physically hurts. And no matter what I do, it’s like I can’t find balance as a human. I can’t make it and I can’t find it and that’s—” he sighed and dropped his head.

“The reason _fae_ exist is to help provide balance between humans and the earth,” he explained. “They work in exchanges to advocate for those forces that humans don’t even consider. Like, cool, you wanna dump plastic bottles into the sea? Great. That’s fantastic for you, but if you do that, some selkie or púca is going to come and fill your couch with those same bottles so you’ll think twice about dumping shit in someone else’s home. They’re all like, I dunno, lawyers, I guess. They negotiate and and make sure that everyone is abiding by the right terms and conditions and when people don’t, then they act on behalf of their assigned spirits to do whatever it takes to get everything back in order.”

Matt paused and rubbed knuckles across his scruffy cheek.

“I wanted to do that,” he said. “I think all _fae_ all drawn towards doing it in some way. But I never wanted to do the exchange. The offerings. You know, that kind of thing. Loads of people can’t spare an offering. Loads of people are caught in exchanges that have nothing to do with them. My dad and I always got the short end of every stick and I thought that people like us deserved to get the benefit of an exchange without having to give something we didn’t have to give for it. And I thought that I could do that only if I was human. But I was wrong.”

Peter couldn’t see Matt’s eyes and he was glad because he thought that they’d be shiny and that would make the tightest in Peter’s throat even worse.

“There are countless _fae_ out in the world trying to help humans and asking for little, if anything in return,” Matt said. “And there is just so much more I could do if I hadn’t been such a hard-headed, concrete-thinkin’ kid. So yeah. It’s—it’s not just about me--I mean, it is about me. I’m tired of living like this. I can’t be like this if I’m Daredevil. It impedes the work. But it’s also about increasing the services I could provide. If I had my coat back, then I could be DD, selkie, _and_ lawyer. I could cover all the bases, so to speak, so that no one gets left out. Including me.”

Peter didn’t know what to say.

Wade took a long time before sighing and saying that Matt was a disgusting goody-goody choir boy and that Jesus himself would weep in pride at his self-sacrifice.

Matt smiled a little at that.

Wade groaned obnoxiously and asked him how exactly he intended to get his coat back.

Matt said that he wasn’t super sure. The sea spirits had to tell him and they would probably tell him when he got back to his ancestral home.

Wade asked where the fuck that was, and Matt said ‘the island,’ which, after some truly shitty guesswork, Wade eventually translated to Ireland.

He said that that was convenient. He loved Ireland. There were loads of drunk people to fight in the street at will on a Saturday night.

This was Wade’s way of saying that he was down to help however he could.

Peter watched Matt do his violently-polite thing--the one where he flailed around anxiously and told Wade that he didn’t have to come or help or do anything more than he was already doing--and thought about it. May seemed like she was willing to go. She said that if they went to Ireland, then she was going to spend some time learning more of the craft from an elder witch. She wanted Peter to learn from this witch, too.

She was allegedly _very_ good. Peter was pretty sure he’d seen her name on the inside covers of a few of the books May kept on the living room bookshelf.

“How exactly would we help you?” he asked Matt.

“Like I said, I’m not sure,” Matt admitted. “My mother’s warned me against going alone, though. She seems to think that whatever Task is ahead is going to require a lot of skills that I don’t have on my own.”

Huh.

“Like fire stuff?” Peter asked.

Matt’s face fell from worry straight into annoyance.

“You can leave him,” he said.

Definitely like fire stuff then.

“Okay, we’ll come,” Peter decided.

Johnny’s sister didn’t want him to go to Ireland, and they were having a family feud over it now. Johnny didn’t have parents anymore and his sister was older than him, so he technically had to listen to her.

He didn’t like it.

He said she was nothing but bossy. That their home was one giant sneak-fest. What he meant by that, Peter had no clue, but apparently there was much invisibility and shape-shifting being used against certain Johnnies there.

May offered to speak to Johnny’s sister about what was happening, which Johnny didn’t think was a great idea.

“She’s gonna freak if she finds out it’s to help selkies,” he said.

Peter didn’t get it.

“She’s a boggart,” Johnny finally came clean. “A shapeshifter. But more like a chameleon. She can hide in plain sight, but she’d rather just hide in the dark so she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t like the sea _fae_ ‘cause they’re known to bring light to darkness and as far as she’s concerned, darkness should stay dark.”

Even May was stumped here.

“But you’re a fire demon,” she pointed out.

Johnny rocked on his heels and shrugged.

“Our parents were a real romantic couple,” he said. “Like, opposites attract to the nth degree.”

“How do you two live together?” May asked.

“Badly,” Johnny said. “She wants everything dark and quiet and I want everything bright and noisy and since she’s older she gets what she wants and I’ve just gotta deal. Which obviously isn’t fair. So I, uh. Just try to stay out of the way, I guess.”

Johnny’s heart squeezed tight as he said the words. Peter wanted to touch him. Hug him. Something.

“Is that why you went looking for a friend?” May asked gently.

“Maybe,” Johnny said. “I wasn’t thinking of it all like that. But maybe.”

May breathed out and put her hands on her hips.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Well. Tell me about boggarts.”

Johnny’s sister wasn’t mean, per se, May said, but she was super protective of him and she, just as Johnny said she would be, was _outraged_ at the thought of him helping some selkie.

She said no. Absolutely, unequivocally no.

Not for some selkie. Never for some selkie. God, the thought alone.

Johnny was pissed.

Johnny argued that she had run off into the arms of some half-human, benevolent _p_ _úca_ , so she had no right to be telling him who he was allowed to be friends with and who he was allowed to help.

This had led to an explosive argument, May told Peter.

She stroked his hair and promised him that Johnny would come back eventually. He and his sister were family. They’d work this out. They just needed a little time.

In the meantime, Peter ought to try to go talk to Foggy to see what kinds of skills a Task typically required. That way, he and May would know what to bring with them to the Island.

Foggy was talking on the phone when Peter came into the office. Karen waved at him brightly, though, and asked him in a whisper if he was in on the gig.

Karen was so funny.

Peter whispered back that he was and Karen showed him the centuries-old map of Ireland she’d spread over the book in her lap like a kid reading magazines in class instead of following along in their textbook.

Peter loved her so much.

She was completely dedicated to the ancient beasts and mythology aesthetic.

“Mom, I need you to take a deep breath,” Foggy said irritably in his office as Peter admired the map. “No one is going to die.”

He sighed, evidently listening to someone very much not taking deep breaths on the other side of the line. He waited. And waited.

“He’s a _c_ _ú sidhe_ , Mother,” Foggy said, then waited patiently again through whatever panic that was causing.

Peter cocked his head and looked to Karen for clarification.

“Big shaggy dog,” she told him. “Scary, scary. Big bark.”

Peter grinned.

“I don’t know. Why would I know?” Foggy said. “No, I—no, Mom. Candace is fine. She’s—no, Mom. Listen to me. _Listen_. We’re just going to stay at Gran’s place. Yeah, I already check with Uncle--No, we don’t need—no, that will 100% give Mr. Murdock flashbacks. You know how much time he put into that thing? If he sees it now, he’s going to go find a grave to roll in.”

 _Fascinating_. Peter could listen to this conversation all day.

“Is Mr. Murdock nice?” he asked Karen.

“The nicest,” Karen whispered back.

“Is he coming with us?”

“Matt’s mom is arranging to come, so yes.”

Woah.

Matt’s nun mom was coming?

“The mother superior at her old convent died, I guess. Apparently she named Sister Maggie in her will for something? I dunno, Matt says this is a begrudging and highly political thing between their church and the one back in Ireland.”

Oh?

Why?

“Because both churches know Sister Maggie’s a selkie and it’s kind of a point of pride between them that she worked for them both,” Karen said. “Matt says it’s a big deal for the church to have had their selkie convert mentioned by such a respected mother superior, so they want her to go participate in all the ritual things as proof to other churches that they can bring _fae_ all the way into the fold.”

Damn.

That was pretty nuts.

“Does Matt have to do that stuff, too?” he asked.

Karen wriggled in closer.

“Matt says that the Sister thinks that the people at the old church have always suspected him to be her pup. He says that that is really controversial for them and some of the nuns back there don’t like the Sister because of it. He said once, when he was little, he heard some of the sisters at his school calling Sister Maggie a bitch. Like a real one. They were mad that the church had let an animal that couldn’t resist her “instincts” into the convent.”

Holy shit.

“Tell me more,” Peter said, leaning onto his elbows on Karen’s desk.

“That’s all I got,” Karen said.

“MOM. No. Unnecessary,” Foggy shouted in his office.

Karen beamed his way. Then beamed Peter’s way.

“I’ve never been more excited in my life,” she told him. “We’re gonna find Matt’s coat.”

Yeah.

They were gonna find Matt’s coat.

‘We’ was more people than Peter thought.

‘We’ included Captain Rogers who was very much pretending like he had _no_ idea what Peter was talking about when Foggy sent him to deliver an envelope with ‘important information’ in it.

“Karen said you’re a big, shaggy dog,” Peter said to Sergeant Barnes who took the envelope from him over Cap’s shoulder.

Sergeant Barnes huffed a laugh.

“Do you like pets?” Peter asked. “Sometimes, if I look really sad, Foggy lets me give him pets.”

Cap went white and stricken.

“He does _what_?” he stammered.

“He lets me give him pets,” Peter repeated for his old ears.

Cap executed a strange, flailing gesture which Peter didn’t quite know how to interpret outside of embodying the frustration that came with being horrendously uncomfortable.

Cap dragged Peter inside the house and pulled him way too close to hiss, “Don’t touch his teeth, Peter. Don’t let him bite you.”

This was weird on many levels. Firstly because Peter never liked old men whispering to him. But also because Foggy nipped at Peter’s hands all the time. It was his way of saying ‘I’m done with you, human. Begone.’ He’d never broken skin or anything like that and Karen was always calling their office a ‘rabies-free zone,’ so it wasn’t like Peter was in danger of getting any seal-sicknesses or anything like that.

“It’s okay, Cap. He doesn’t love pets,” Peter told him, patting at his shoulder. “He only lets me have three max before he tells me to fuck off.”

Cap decided that he needed to freak out at Peter saying ‘fuck’ next.

“Are you coming with us to Ireland?” Peter asked him.

“No,” Cap said immediately.

“Back to the motherland, da?” Sergeant Barnes said in a heavy Russian accent behind them. Peter watched him and he gave Peter a big thumbs up.

“No,” Cap said behind him. “Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?” Sergeant Barnes asked in that heavy accent.

Cap’s jaw twitched.

“Is Mr. Wilson coming, too?” Peter asked him.

Cap eyed him up and down.

“No one’s coming,” he said.

“Oh, heya, Pete,” Mr. Wilson’s voice said from the stairs. “You hear we’re going cave-diving?”

“We’re not doing anything,” Cap said before anyone could say anything more. “We’re not going anywhere. We’re having a perfectly—”

“Apparently there’s this guy who lives in a cave and makes hair out of memories,” Mr. Wilson said over him from the top of the stairs. “Buck was telling me about it. Shit’s just _wild_ , huh?”

Woah.

Peter turned hopefully in Sergeant Barnes’s way.

“Are there a lot of _fae_ in Ireland?” he asked. “Are there more _fae_ in Ireland than there are in New York? Can I see them?”

Sergeant Barnes’s grin went wider as Cap threw up his hands and declared that he was going upstairs to brood and if anyone needed him, he’d be locking himself in a trunk.

“So many more than you could ever understand, human-child,” Sergeant Barnes said.

It made Peter shiver.

He couldn’t stop grinning now.

Matt was organizing travel things. Peter was helping him pack, or rather, watching him pack. Irritating him while he packed.

It didn’t matter. They had two days until the Friday before Spring Break and he was buzzing. Everyone was packing. Everyone.

Besides MJ and Ned. They were mad about it, too. They told Peter that it wasn’t fair that he got to run off and do cool shit over break while everyone else just played video games.

Peter didn’t know what to tell them. It was one of the perks of being a witch.

“How long did you live in Ireland when you were little?” Peter asked Matt and his label machine.

“About a year,” Matt said, tucking a paper tag into the collars of one of his shirts.

“That’s where you met Foggy?”

“It is.”

“Is Karen going to freak out?”

“Karen’s been freaking out for weeks now.”

“Is it safe to put Johnny on a plane?”

“Probably not.”

“Can the metal detectors detect _fae_?”

“We’re about to find out.”

“Why’s Cap still pretending he’s not coming with us?”

“He thinks he’s offended Foggy.”

“Does Sergeant Barnes know that?”

“I am beyond sure that he does.”

“Is Sergeant Barnes gonna turn into a dog when he gets there?”

“Sergeant Barnes and Cap have made a deal with my mother to protect me,” Matt said patiently. “How he does that is not any of my concern. It’s between him and my mother.”

That was so cool.

“One more question,” Peter said.

Matt paused in his packing to direct a strong, skeptical look to Peter’s right.

“For real. I promise. One more: what are you going to do with you coat one you get it?” Peter asked.

Matt tipped his head slowly to the side.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess I’ll figure it out once I’ve actually got it again.”

Cool. Neat. Awesome.

“Okay, but just one more question—”

“ _Peter.”_


	2. between glens

The problem was not getting to the airport or onto a plane.

The problem was getting to the same airport and then onto the same plane as Captain America.

Cap looked just about ready to swim to Ireland.

The TSA appeared to be doing the best they could to keep folks from swarming him as he and Sergeant Barnes and Mr. Wilson dutifully handed over their passports as ID in the line right before security, but it wasn’t enough. Phones and cameras were out everywhere, shuttering away.

“Travel a lot, Cap?” the TSA officer behind Peter said.

Cap was not in the mood for conversation making.

Sergeant Barnes couldn’t go through the metal detectors, like, period, which added another layer of stress to Cap’s already very stressful day. Instead, he was led away from everyone else by a TSA officer. He waved as he went and promised Mr. Wilson that he’d be on his best behavior.

Mr. Wilson scoffed and yanked his sweatshirt over his head. His shirt rode up a little and Peter actually saw people swoon a bit in the line behind them all.

Cap set off the metal detector.

He was very confused.

He held out his arms and let himself be wanded down and then wanded up and the thing beeped obnoxiously over his ribs.

He remained very confused.

One shirt later, he was still very confused, as was every TSA officer in the area.

The crowd in the security line, on the other hand, was having a _great_ time. Just watching them was enough to make Peter’s day.

Matt asked Peter what was happening. Peter wasn’t sure what was actually happening beyond the hub-bub. Matt asked Foggy and Foggy said that Cap’s side was getting tested for illicit material. He had none on him, but everything kept beeping.

The TSA officer nearest him finally hesitantly asked, “You been shot lately, Cap?” And it was like the sky had opened over the guy’s head.

“Oh my god, Sam. They found it,” he called.

Mr. Wilson very patiently told Peter while Cap was dragged off to join his best guy Bucky in the examination room that this was why he never traveled with these lugs.

“They’re human pin cushions,” he said.

“Or just pin cushions,” Foggy noted.

There was a pause.

“That’s fair,” Sam said.

Sister Maggie joined them all in their claimed corner about half an hour later. She seemed deeply unsettled and kept smoothing a hand over the top of her travel bag. Foggy asked her if there was anything he could do for her and she said that anything that would make her unconscious for the next ten hours would be welcome.

Peter noticed that she had a small box under her arm.

“Is that Matt’s dad?” he asked her when everyone had settled back into waiting for Cap and the Sergeant to be released from TSA jail.

May’s hand miraculously appeared over Peter’s mouth.

“I’m so sorry,” May said over his head. “He wasn’t thinking.”

Sister Maggie lifted an eyebrow and smiled a little.

“No, that’s alright. He’s fine,” she said. Peter ducked out of May’s grip and glared at her. She stared at him fiercely back.

“My mate is sleeping,” Sister Maggie told him when he looked back. “He doesn’t like flying.”

“Where’s he sleeping?” Peter asked.

Sister Maggie tapped at the top of her bag.

“In the flute,” she said.

“That’s cruel,” Matt interjected.

“Hush you,” Sister Maggie snapped at him.

“He hates that thing,” Matt huffed.

“No, _you_ hate it. Jonathan is indifferent to it,” Sister Maggie sniffed.

Matt grumbled.

“How does he come out?” Peter asked the Sister. She flicked her eyes back to him and hummed.

“He’ll wake when I call for him,” she said. “Until then, so as to save us all from his anxiety, he will sleep. _Matthew_.”

Matt took Foggy’s travel pillow and buried himself in it. Sister Maggie narrowed her eyes at him, then turned to Mr. Wilson and frowned.

“Where is your hound?” she asked.

Peter almost laughed. She said the word like it was an insult.

“Getting tagged,” Mr. Wilson said. “I’m actually surprised they didn’t give you a harder time with the habit.”

Sister Maggie considered this. Then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth any more of her time and effort.

“Have you properly met Matthew, then?” she asked.

Mr. Wilson looked coolly over to where Matt was still drowning in travel pillow.

“Turns out we’ve met more than a couple times,” he said diplomatically.

Matt said something that was muffled into the pillow.

“I have to say, Murdock,” Mr. Wilson said, turning around in his uncomfortable chair, “You’ve got the best cover in the world.”

Matt muffled something that sounded somewhat like ‘thanks, pal.’

Sister Maggie scolded him to be nicer.

He emerged from the pillow to say, “I’m sorry that she’s done this to you.”

Sister Maggie’s anxiety vanished nearly immediately. She asked him if he’d been born in a barn in the kind of tone that made the hair on the back of Peter’s neck raise.

Foggy took the opportunity to announce that he was going to go ward Karen away from the true crime and myths and legends sections of the bookstore. May told Peter that they were going to go get snacks for the flight.

Peter got a box of lemon heads.

He and May got back and had a seat on the other side of the row, right behind Matt and Sister Maggie’s mutual silent fuming. The tension was broken, thankfully, by the reappearance of Karen. She had that effect on people. And while she was unhappy to be pried from her new obsession, but upon seeing and meeting Mr. Wilson, who it appeared, Matt had been forcibly shoved into acquaintanceship with, she lit up.

“We’re going to meet a leprechaun,” she told Mr. Wilson seriously.

“Over my dead body,” Foggy said.

Matt pressed into him as soon as he came over to sit on his left.

“Where’s the Star-Spangled Man and his plan?” Foggy asked.

Mr. Wilson cupped his chin with a palm.

“Just out of the exam room,” he said. “Steve dug out his own bullet again.”

Oh god.

Those poor TSA officers.

Foggy pressed a balled hand to his nose to contain himself.

“His fame is the _only_ thing that keeps him from being sectioned,” he said.

“Correct. And lucky for us, we’ve got a couple of lawyers at the ready when he and JB inevitably break international law,” Mr. Wilson said amiably.

“You’re already breaking international law,” May pointed out. “Your dog has no shots.”

“Sh,” Karen said. “None of the seals do either.”

Matt squawked.

“I’ve had all my fuckin’ shots, thank you,” he said. “I’ve had all my shots and then some.”

Karen cooed at him.

Sergeant Barnes found them before Cap did. He said that he’d lost him buying a new shirt.

“Couldn’t find one that said ‘Piece of Ass’ on it, so I left him to it,” Sergeant Barnes said.

“Tell him not to get anything with a flag on it,” Foggy said.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” Sergeant Barnes promised. “Steve would rather—oh, hey you.”

Cap seemed totally fine. He was wearing gray now instead of the blue he’d walked in with, but you know what? Perfectly fine.

“You traumatize enough state agents?” Mr. Wilson asked him.

“It was only half a shell,” Cap said. “Came out pretty easy.”

Cap was nuts.

Peter hoped he was sitting next to him. He asked to see his bordering pass. Cap gave it to him and did a quick double take at Matt.

“Oh,” he said after a moment.

Matt went all tense.

“So how does this work?” Cap asked him. “Do you just jump off a pier while the rest of us are on standby?”

Peter tried to imagine Cap wearing a puffy orange lifejacket. He stuffed his face into his balled-up jacket to contain himself.

“In the best case scenario, I fight a giant and win,” Matt told him, dead serious.

Cap took a long moment before saying, “Okay? What’s the worst?”

“I just fucking drown upon touchdown,” Matt said.

“We got a likelihood of that here?” Sergeant Barnes asked.

Matt hummed. Foggy frowned.

“I’m sayin’ a 30% both ways,” Matt said. “With a 40% in the middle there for some creativity.”

Sergeant Barnes drummed fingers on his nose.

“Not the worst odds,” he said.

Mr. Wilson set his forehead into his palm.

Cap and his guys were sitting in the emergency exit row for every possible good reason in the world. Peter had never felt so prepared for an emergency. He was pretty damn sure that everyone on their part of the plane felt the exact same way.

The flight attendant asked the three guys if they were willing to open the hatch in the case of an emergency.

“Honey, you leave Steve on his own for long enough and he’ll open it for _fun_ ,” Sergeant Barnes said.

Cap told him to shove it where the sun don’t shine. Then he told the attendant very politely that yes, they were entirely prepared to take emergency action.

“Don’t you sweat it. We even brought the team medic,” Sergeant Barnes tacked on to that statement.

“Ma’am, I’m really sorry, but this man is disruptive, is there a chance we could have him moved?” Cap asked, approaching new heights of violent politeness.

Peter was positive that the whole flight consist of people watching those two squabble.

Peter was tucked in next to May in the middle row because he was not yet tall enough to petition for an end seat. Matt, Foggy, and Karen were on the other side. Wade hadn’t shown up at the airport. He claimed he wasn’t welcome there anymore and would be taking an ‘alternate route.’ Peter didn’t know what that meant exactly, but he did know that Sister Maggie was praying quietly next to him with a rosary in between her hands. Matt cocked his head their way and batted at Karen to get her attention. Karen dutifully reached over the guy on the end seat and caught Sister Maggie’s attention with a similar motion.

“Everything’s going to be fine, Mum,” Matt said gently across the aisle.

Sister Maggie considered him.

She said nothing.

Foggy chased Karen out of the way and got up to rustle through the bags overhead before the seatbelt sign came on. He shut the overhead bin and then leaned over the offending aisle man to hand Sister Maggie a cloth bundle before stumbling back into his seat.

Sister Maggie’s lip flickered and she thanked Foggy who waved it off and went back to arguing with Matt over nothing.

The bundle was wrapped with green and blue plaid. It looked like old plaid. Kinda faded. It had been wrapped tightly into an oval shape and was smooth on top. Sister Maggie ran a thumb over it before setting it into her lap and returning to her praying.

It was just as they took off that Peter realized that that was her flute.

Matt’s dad was sleeping in there.

Aw. That was kind of cute. It was like he was sitting with them.

Peter got tired of watching tv after one movie. He looked between the seats at the Caps and saw that Sergeant Barnes had strapped on headphones and knocked out on Mr. Wilson’s shoulder. Cap had never seemed more tense. The veins in his knuckles were visible from where Peter was sitting, two rows behind.

“Doesn’t like to fly?” he asked May quietly when she noticed him looking.

“Maybe bad memories,” she told him gently.

She nudged him back into better posture and put a hand on his pocket over Johnny.

Johnny was sleeping in there as a fire. An ember, technically. Trapped in an airtight headphones case. He wasn’t super safe to fly otherwise. That sucked because things were boring without him and his happy chatter.

“Take a nap, Pete,” May said. “It’ll make things seem shorter.”

And like, fine.

He startled awake and blinked blearily around the cabin. May petted his head and told him he was okay. She just wanted to know what he wanted to eat.

The flight attendant smiled at him indulgently.

He picked pasta and then checked on the Daredevil crew who were all variously passed out on each other.

Sister Maggie was reading. To Peter’s surprise, she wasn’t reading a Bible. The book was heavy, though, and it was written in a language Peter had never seen before. It looked more like Hebrew than English. The bundle in her lap, he realized, seemed greener than it had been before.

It was lightest in the middle, almost like it was glowing while she read.

May tapped at his arm and told him to eat.

The rest of the trip was not super exciting. The pilot thanked Cap on the way out. It made him awkward. So yeah, he took a selfie with them. And then with the group of tourists who waited outside the arrival area for him.

It was then that Sergeant Barnes announced it was ‘Elsa time,’ which Sam translated for the rest of them as time for him and Cap to go layer up and make themselves less recognizable.

Peter asked if this mandated a ball cap.

It did not.

He was kind of disappointed. Mr. Stark always told him that everyone on Cap’s usual team wore sunglasses and ballcaps when they were pretending to be normal.

This time, ‘normal’ was Steve adopting a high-necked aran sweater and a blue scarf while Sergeant Barnes loosely French braided his hair.

“Are we sufficiently hipster?” Cap asked with zero inflection.

Sergeant Barnes tossed his mane.

“ _I_ am glamorous, sir,” he said to top off his huge cream infinity scarf and holey black hoodie.

“I feel like a sheep,” Cap said.

“Onward, Stíofan,” Sergeant Barnes said, blazing past him. “We’ve returned to the home of your people. Don’t disgrace me in front of your Nan.”

“I never even met my Nan,” Cap sighed, allowing himself to be dragged away.

Mr. Wilson beamed after them.

They were taking a bus up north from Dublin, but first, apparently they all needed a quick breather. Sister Maggie wanted to touch the water. What water? Didn’t matter. Any water.

She and Foggy found a fountain filled with rainwater and plunged their hands into it immediately.

Karen was captivated.

“Go on,” she told Matt.

Matt cocked his head.

“Go on, what?” he asked.

“Go do seal things,” Karen encouraged. “Here, I’ll hold your bag.”

Matt remained confused.

“What seal things?” he asked.

Karen looked between him and the other selkies, both of who Peter was pretty sure would climb into the fountain if they weren’t in public.

“Matt,” Karen said seriously. “Seal things. Go touch the homeland water. You have to do seal things to be a seal.”

Matt frowned hard, then touched his chest.

“I don’t…” he said. “I don’t feel anything different?”

There was a pause.

“Is that bad?” Karen asked.

Matt lifted his face. His face said it was.

“No idea,” he said nervously.

Matt was panicking as quietly as anyone could panic and Peter admired him for it as they all piled onto the bus. The driver stopped Cap and said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“Did some modelling,” Steve deadpanned. “H&M.”

“Ah. Thought so. Come on board, son.”

Mr. Wilson was _dying_ in the very back of the bus. Peter was glad he was having a good time.

It was three hours north to Foggy and Sister Maggie’s home, but already, their accents had started veering into unintelligible. Matt didn’t appear to notice anything until Karen asked him what the fuck his people were saying. Only then did he snap out of his internal panicking to listen to the world around him.

“Going through the glens,” he told Karen.

“What’s a glen?” Karen asked him.

Matt had clearly, not once in his life, ever been asked to define this word.

Peter grinned at him.

“Eugh. Um. Valley? I think it’s a—Mum. Glen? Valley?” Matt asked the other two. They shut up and stared at him.

“Yes,” Sister Maggie said slowly, like he was an idiot.

“Karen’s asking,” Matt said.

“Why’re you pale, boy?” Sister Maggie accused.

“Am I?”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Matt got even paler.

“What’s the matter with you?” Sister Maggie demanded.

“Nothing,” Matt said.

“Are you nervous?”

“What? No.”

She didn’t believe him for a second.

“Here,” she said, shoving her green bundle into his arms. “Don’t be nervous. You’re back where you’re meant to be.”

Matt accepted the bundle and after a moment tucked it up against his chest. He didn’t say anything. Karen’s forehead wrinkled watching him.

They got off in a region called Donegal. It was more green than anywhere Peter had ever seen. From that bus station, they caught yet another ancient bus going into town.

“Man, you grew up in the sticks, Nelson,” Mr. Wilson noted over the seats of this new bus.

Foggy shrugged.

“Small town, big spirit,” he said.

“There’s another hound here.”

They all looked back to see Sergeant Barnes staring dreamily out the foggy window. There was something strange going on with his eyes. It was like they were changing color with each bump in the road.

“There is,” Foggy said. “There are a number of them on the island.”

Sergeant Barnes stayed quiet. Cap snapped next to his ear and a hand slammed closed over his fist in the blink of an eye; lo and behold, the Sergeant was back to earth.

“Wha?” he said.

“You’re dreaming,” Cap said.

“Wha?” Sergeant Barnes looked up at him as if he hadn’t hear him. Cap lifted an eyebrow.

“Thousand-yard-stare,” he repeated.

Mr. Wilson leaned over to see the Sergeant around Cap.

“You alright, JB?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sergeant Barnes said softly. “Yeah, I think I am.”

All of the _fae_ in their party were having some kind of moment, Peter decided. Johnny was stirring awake in his pocket and pulsing out of time with his heart. He’d never done that before. When he wasn’t pulsing in time with his own heart, he was pulsing in time with Peter’s, but this was different than that. His heat seemed to be increasing too. Not hot enough to burn, but warm enough that it felt like a heatpack now instead of your typical animal warmth.

Peter laid his hand over the little vessel in his pocket to steady him and while the pulsing settled, the heat stayed right where it was.

Mr. Wilson and Cap kept murmuring to each other. They’d swapped seats so that Mr. Wilson could smooth a hand through the hair at the base of Sergeant Barnes’s neck.

Sergeant Barnes had faded out.

He’d been drifting before, but now it was as though he was sleeping sitting up, rocking slightly every so often with the bus. His eyes were paler than Peter had ever seen them. One of them had a yellow ring around its iris. May pressed Peter a little closer when she noticed it.

The selkies had gone quiet, too. Both Sister Maggie and Foggy stared out the window in absolute silence. Karen was uncomfortable with it. Matt didn’t stare out the window. Instead, he’d lifted his head towards the roof of the bus. He closed his eyes in long blinks and held the bundle in his hands looser and looser. Karen was keeping an eye on it.

It was pretty surreal.

“Are they okay?” Peter whispered to May. She wasn’t sure. She deferred to Cap and Mr. Wilson.

Cap had dealt with this sort of thing for longer than he was willing to admit, but even he wasn’t so sure.

“Bucky used to do this a long, long time ago,” he said. “Only by the beach. Only on cloudy days. We were pretty small then, maybe eight? Nine? He used to tell me he was listening for music.”

Music?

“A song of the sea,” Cap said.

“What’s it sound like?” Peter asked, wriggling around to face him over the back of his seat.

Cap brought a shoulder up lightly.

“I don’t have that much of the Sense,” he said.

Peter tipped his head.

“What’s the Sense?” he asked.

May touched his arm.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Cap said. “It’s like sometimes, I see and hear things that aren’t there. _Fae_ things. I’ve had it since I was small.”

Oh.

So that’s how Cap had gotten involved with this mess.

Foggy pulled the cord at what felt like a random bus station not far from the shoreline. Peter could see the sea from there. A huge expanse of blue crashing up against towering, speckled cliffs that were dusted at the top with white before a blanket of green rolled over them. It was cloudy and windy and cold and it smelled like salt and kelp when they all stepped out of the bus.

Matt went from being in a daze to being on high alert. The highest alert. Daredevil levels of alertness. Sister Maggie placed a hand on his elbow and he stopped moving around so jerkily.

She told him something too quietly for Peter to hear.

“Alright, so my sister’s offered to give you all a ride to your B&B,” Foggy told the others. “And May, you said you’re staying with Mrs. Doyle?”

“Do you know her?” May asked.

Foggy winced.

“Not the way you do,” he said. “We keep clear of her, honestly.”

Peter snickered.

“The good news is she lives not too far,” Foggy said. “I can walk you there from my folks’ place.”

Peter was excited again.

“Sister are you--?” Foggy asked.

“I’ll be leaving you,” Sister Maggie said. “The convent has sent a car.”

She pulled Matt in and made him bend over so she could talk to him before breaking away. He did a lot of nodding and what seemed to Peter to be some promising before she let him go.

“Well, okay then,” Foggy said in her wake. “Cand will be here any—”

He didn’t get that far because a shrill scream broke out across the station. Peter dropped into being battle-ready without meaning to. He heard the rapid clicking of the Sergeant’s arm.

“FOGGY.”

Karen pulled Matt out of the line of fire as a woman threw herself into Foggy.

He stumbled back.

The lady screamed again, even though she’d already latched onto him.

“ _Jesus_ , Cand,” Foggy swore. “You’re makin’ me deaf. Ease off, ya menace.”

The lady pulled back to look at him, then slammed herself forward to shriek a third time.

“You’re! So! _Red_!” she jittered, jumping up and down without letting go of Foggy.

Foggy was done. He’d only endured this for seconds at the most, but he’d gone all slack with irritation.

“My sister Candace,” he introduced to the rest of them. Peter felt the tension slip from his shoulders.

Foggy’s sister ripped herself away from him and grinned huge. She looked a whole lot like Foggy, but with a slightly slimmer face and a torrent of freckles that climbed up her forehead and temples into her dirty blond hair.

“Hello!” she said. Then froze. “Oh my _god_ , Matty? Is that you?”

Matt smiled sheepishly, then threw his hands over his ears when Foggy’s sister screeched and flung herself upon him next.

She crushed him in her arms, shaking him from side to side like a bulldog while wailing, “You’re! So! _Tall_!”

Foggy seemed pleased.

“Oh my god. Look at you, Matty,” his sister gasped, yanking herself back suddenly. “Oh my god. _Franklin_. You didn’t tell me he got hot.”

Matt’s smile twitched with irritation.

Karen barked out a laugh.

This caught Foggy’s sister’s attention.

“And who’s _this_?” she demanded. “Wow, look at you Fogs. Makin’ friends with…” she trailed off.

Cap stepped swiftly behind Mr. Wilson.

“Is that?” Foggy’s sister started.

“Client of mine,” Foggy said. “Here for many reasons which will become illuminated in a setting which is _not here_.”

“Fogs.”

“Not here,” Foggy said. “Did you bring Mom’s car or—”

“Fogs, Mom’s gonna kill you,” Foggy’s sister said seriously to him. “And not just for the tongue piercing.”

Foggy narrowed his eyes at her until they were almost slits.

Foggy’s family lived in a really quaint house that felt like a beach house despite its wood being way too dark for that. The porch was bleached white in places from the sun, but underneath its roof, it was cool and damp. There were rugs and bits and bobs tossed haphazardly over the sides of the railings to dry.

Foggy threatened his sister in a strong, warning tone as she unlocked the front door. Foggy looked apologetically back at the rest of them and mouthed ‘sorry.’ Peter looked over and saw Sergeant Barnes thoughtfully watching a string of dried starfish spin in a lazy circle above them.

The door opened.

A repeat of Candace’s bus-stop greeting occurred, this time performed by a dark-haired woman with tears streaming down her face. She hugged the life out of every single person, whether she knew them or not. When she got to Matt, she gasped.

“Mrs. Nelson,” Matt greeted.

She gasped again.

“Matty,” she said. “You’re so tall, honey.”

Peter was getting the impression that Matt had been a scrawny kid.

“Are you surprised?” Matt asked pleasantly.

Mrs. Nelson stared up at him.

“Baby, your mum’s the size of garden gnome, we were all praying for you, love.”

Mr. Wilson kind of lost it. Matt was no longer flattered.

“I have many excellent qualities,” he said.

“And your father was so handsome, dear. You’re a lucky wain.”

Matt seemed to droop further.

“Look at that hair. My god, Matthew. Who have you become? Where’s my little ginger pup?”

Matt was going to sink into this porch.

“Mrs. Nelson, this is Captain America,” he said.

Foggy gave him a furious look, but it was too late.

“FRANKLIN. NELSON. YOU BRING CAPTAIN. AMERICA. TO THIS HOUSEHOLD WHEN I AIN’T FINISHED CLEANIN’?”

“I hate you,” Foggy whispered Matt’s way.

“Ginger pup,” Matt whispered back.

Peter was left out of the very serious explanation currently being had in the living room of Foggy’s parents’ house. Explanations were going around that required much gasping and at some point, apparently more crying. May told him he didn’t have to sit with them, so he went back out onto the porch.

Johnny was stirring a little again, but not like he had been before. He was pulsing lightly now in time with Peter’s heart.

Sleeping.

Peter hopped down the steps of the house. They felt soft as he went. They smelled like wet wood.

He poked around the garden a little bit. It was full of plants he didn’t recognize. Some with big broad leaves that collected water at their centers. Some delicate, fluffy things that emerged from their raised planter boxes in little puffs.

It had been raining lately. Or so the little pools of water collected in the hollows of the stones around the Nelsons’ yard said.

The ground was soft.

It was a calming space.

He looked out from the yard and saw the sea off in the distance. There was a lighthouse further out that way, barely visible from the mist that swept in from the curve of the cliff closer inland. Coming in even closer from that was part of a semi-obscured harbor with boats jostling lightly with the tide.

He felt like each breath in was something special.

He got back up to the porch to find Sergeant Barnes looking out from the side of it in the direction where Peter had just been staring.

“It’s really something, huh, kid?” he said.

His whole iris was a light yellow now. Like a soft gold.

“Yeah,” Peter said quietly.

“Feels like home,” Sergeant Barnes said.

“Feels important,” Peter told him.

Sergeant Barnes looked at him. His other eye was a bright grey. It looked like a contact.

“Don’t go wandering off in these parts,” he said. “It’s quieter here than in the city, but that don’t make it safer.”

Peter wondered what he could hear in the distance.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

He came back inside when Mr. Wilson came out and told Sergeant Barnes that Foggy was going to drive them to where they were staying instead of his sister. Candace was going to take May and Peter up to Mrs. Doyle.

Apparently Foggy’s mom didn’t want him near the old witch. Pointing out that May and Peter were witches got them nothing but an “I know, loves. But she’s _old_. It’s different.”

Candace explained as she put guided them out into the road that it wasn’t that their family didn’t like Mrs. Doyle, it was just that she’d gotten mad at one of the village pups way back when and had cursed it to be afraid of the water for two years.

“Pretty fucked up thing to do to a selkie,” Candace said. “Anyways, we’re so happy to have you all here.”

“We’re very happy to be here,” May said.

Candace smiled at her. Her teeth looked perfectly normal. Not like Foggy’s. Foggy’s teeth always seemed just a hair too sharp.

“It’s honestly such a shock,” Candace said, waving a hand. “We’ve never seen Matty without his coat, you know. He hasn’t been back in so long. Everything’s been through a messenger app.”

“Does he look different?” May asked.

There were streetlights here, but they were rusty and their light was weak in the mist. Peter saw a frog sitting under one.

“Mm, not so much looks,” Candace said. “More like feels.”

Peter adjusted his duffle bag strap and looked ahead at the two ladies.

“You can feel him?” May asked.

“I can,” Candace said. “I can feel you, too. What’s on your wrist there, little witch?”

Peter instinctively hid his bracelet behind his back.

Candace smiled over her shoulder. She looked more like Foggy when she smiled.

“It’s alright,” she said. “You don’t have to show me.”

Good, because he wasn’t going to.

Mrs. Doyle lived in a cave-like house that was surrounded on all sides by grass and a meandering wall made out of piled stones. There was a single streetlamp out in front of it, but its light didn’t illuminate the the gravel road that lead to the wall’s break.

Candace wouldn’t go any further with them.

“You’re welcome to come over tomorrow for breakfast,” she said, in front of the streetlamp. “Any veggies among you?”

Any what?

“Don’t worry about us. Thank you, though, that’s very kind of you,” May said. “And thanks for walking us.”

“Sure thing,” Candace said, “We’re down the hill, one right over, all the way at the end. You’ll know us from the shells.”

The ones hanging from the porch.

“Good night,” May said.

“Good night,” Candace said. “Mind your names.”

“Mind our names?” Peter asked quietly as May started walking up the path to the break in the stone walls.

“Apparently,” May said.

The house in front of them was old. Ages old. The gaps in the stones that made up its face were filled with cement and there was moss growing thickly on the front window’s frame.

The door was painted a teal that was hard to make out with the lack of light.

It creaked open slowly on ancient hinges and there stood Mrs. Doyle, all five feet of her, haloed in orange light. She was plump with a messy bun on top of her head and glasses so thick they made her eyes seem twice their size.

“May Parker?” she asked in a voice choking in smoke.

“And Peter,” May said, smiling.

Mrs. Doyle inspected them both for a long, long time.

“You’ll do,” she said. “Get yourselves in before the hounds start bayin’.”


	3. under rivers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were going out to the lighthouse. The furthest point out into the sea. And then they were going for a swim for as far as it took to meet the great Manannán mac Lir. 
> 
> A god of the sea.

It was hard to sleep in a new place in general, but something about sleeping in rural Europe made Steve’s heart keep fluttering. His eyes cracked open without his permission and revealed their cozy little B&B room, veiled in blues and whites.

Turning over and burying himself into Buck’s hair didn’t help as much as it usually did; partly because Buck still had that messy, now disastrous, braid in, but also because he was very preoccupied with spreading himself across every inch of Sam’s chest that he could reach.

How Sam didn’t suffocate like that, Steve would never know. He’d asked once and Sam had just shrugged and said it reminded him of wearing all his gear back in the old days. Those vests were heavy, Steve knew. Heavier than anything he and Buck had worn on the continent next to this island.

He sat up and watched the other two breath for a minute. Then leaned over the edge of the bed to find his boots.

It was cold outside. Early, dark, and threatening to rain.

The B&B had a deck right outside its doors that fed out into a tiny courtyard with a garden on the side and a set of clotheslines hovering over it.

The rock and grit under his boots crunched wetly as he walked past those swinging lines to what looked like a trailhead that caught up just on the side of the hill the building was set up against to keep it safe from the wind.

He stared down that trail bracketed by thick-growing brambles and nettle on all sides.

“Never at night, and never alone,” he heard Ma’s voice murmur, echoing somewhere in his head.

She’d told him this about taking shortcuts home from the docks. She’d told him this to keep his scrawny, delicate frame away from the alleys between pubs and their raucous singing and shouting. She hadn’t said it about any forests. There were no forests in Brooklyn.

Still, he wasn’t stupid.

He gave the forest two fingers for calling to him in his fragile state, then took the sandy-looking path that swooped cleanly around the bramble tunnel.

The path went up and up to a kissing gate. Steve hadn’t seen one for years. He almost laughed. He stepped up into it, swung the wooden gate into place, and hopped down onto the other side.

He made a note that it was about fifteen minutes away from the B&B. He didn’t want to go too far or else Buck would snap awake and sound the alarm.

It was strange. The more time Buck spent upstate with his elder, the more he seemed to just know where Steve was. He never asked anymore.

He asked Sam where he was all the fucking time. That paranoia hadn’t lessened in even the slightest. But for Steve, it was always a ‘hey, how was Stark?’ or a ‘hey, I texted you I already got milk, no need to go to the store.’

It wasn’t bad, just…new.

Steve was afraid to ask the Sister if she knew anything about it, but he didn’t know any other elder-like _fae_. Thor was still mad that he’d given the Sister his name, so he certainly wasn’t an option. Lately, he’d been squinting harshly at Bucky any time they were in the same area, and Banner had started to catch onto it.

Dangerous waters, those.

Bruce was a great guy. Bless him, he was game to believe just about anything these days. But Steve thought that the _fae_ might finally do it for him. Might finally make him crack.

Scary.

Okay, no more thinking about Hulks. Only cliffs. Let’s get to the top of the cliff, have a couple breaths, then go back down and try to sleep before 3.

There we go, Rogers. Good thinking. Almost healthy, even.

The path beyond the kissing gate led to a grassy little shoulder that looked out at the ocean before it curved back around towards a set of stone steps carved into the side of the rock. These wandered up to an even smaller path up the side of the towering white flecked cliff above. Steve caught himself staring up at its summit for several long moments. He shook himself out of the trance and shivered.

He wasn’t positive, but he thought that there was something way up there, perched on top of that cliff. Something that glowed.

No, thank you.

He turned back out to the sea and breathed in. The wind buffeted him and slid effortlessly through the holes of the sweater he’d pulled on before leaving. The ocean groaned and hissed in the distance.

He shivered again and snapped his face over his shoulder.

No one was there. Just the dark, rustling nettle.

But he wasn’t falling this shit. Nice try, slugger.

“I ain’t your guy,” he told the nettle firmly.

It didn’t move. Steve didn’t miss that. Especially as the wind sunk sharp fingers into the skin of his arms. Especially as the nettle and grass all around that single patch rattled and bustled.

“I’m here for a friend,” Steve told the nettle.

“Friend of a hound,” whispery voices hissed out from the green.

Steve couldn’t hear the sea anymore. His heart had gone slow.

“Come closer,” the voices rustled.

Steve held his breath.

“There is a corpse here,” the voices hissed.

Oh _hell_ no.

Nuh-uh.

Steve had heard this motherfucking story.

“I’m sick,” he said. “This body isn’t mine. I’m just borrowing it. I’m too ill to make the journey you need.”

The whispering carried on but didn’t make itself into words.

“I’m leaving,” Steve told them with the hair on the back of his neck nearly standing all the way up on its own. “I’m sorry. Maybe the next person can do it for you.”

The whispering died off into quiet and the nettles started swaying and buffeting with the wind again. Steve shuddered, then hurried back towards the kissing gate, careful not to look back over his shoulder. Once he was on the other side, he took a second to say a quick prayer for the next sorry soul that followed his steps up that hill.

He snuck back into the B&B and creaked up the stairs as quietly as he could, but even with those precautions taken, Buck woke up as the door opened.

“Stevie?” he slurred.

“Go back to sleep,” Steve told him closing the door softly so as not to wake Sam.

“Where’d you go?”

“Just for a walk.”

Buck’s hair slid down over his shoulder as he pushed himself up. His face tightened.

“Don’t,” he said seriously. “Don’t do that again. Not here. Not without me.”

Yeah.

Yeah, Steve got it now.

“I won’t,” he promised.

“Shit’s dangerous, Steve.”

“I know. Sorry.”

“Did you get hurt?”

No. But not for lack of trying.

“Come here, bub,” Buck said, holding out a hand. “You must be freezin’.”

He was. But he thought that that probably wasn’t why he couldn’t stop shivering.

Sleep came easier this time.

He woke up to Sam and Bucky’s murmuring.

“—burnt?” Sam asked.

“It’s the cold iron,” Bucky said softly. “It wards away _fae_.”

“Does it ward you away?” Sam asked.

“No. I’m not malevolent.”

“You sure?”

“Stuff it, Wilson.”

Steve rolled over and winced at the light pouring in front the windows. He heard a chuff of laughter.

“Morning Cinderella,” Buck said, holding a steaming mug of coffee up his way in greeting. “Good news! Your prince followed you home from the ball.”

Say what?

“There’s scorch marks on the porch,” Sam said seriously.

Oh, shit.

“They musta really liked you to try to put foot on ground guarded by iron,” Bucky said, sipping at his mug.

“Steve,” Sam said sternly. “We’ve talked about the night-wandering.”

The shame was more embarrassing than heated.

“I know, I’m sorry. Just couldn’t sleep,” he said. He untangled himself from the quilt and sheets and crossed his legs. It was cold as hell in the room. He could nearly see his breath.

“S’alright,” Buck said. “They followed you down, but they didn’t get you. Did you talk to them?”

Steve didn’t know what was the right answer here.

Buck read his silence like a book and huffed.

“They wanted me to carry a corpse,” Steve said.

Bucky scoffed. Sam balked.

“A corpse?” he repeated.

“What’d you tell ‘em?” Buck asked.

Steve shrugged.

“Told ‘em I was too ill,” he said.

“Atta boy, Stevie.”

“Wait. I’m sorry, let’s go back to the _corpse_ ,” Sam said. Buck grinned at him.

“You really want to know?” he asked. Sam stared at him flatly. “Come on, Sammy. Say it. Do you really want to know? You want to hear the story?”

Sam glared.

He’d told Steve many a time over the last few weeks that while he loved nothing more than a good urban legend, all the mystic nonsense that went into the stories Buck and folks like him told was a bit melodramatic for his tastes. He just wanted the story, goddamnit.

“I’m not saying it,” he maintained.

Buck pouted. Steve rolled his eyes.

“There was this asshole named Tadhg O’Kane,” he explained before Buck could jump in with a snotty ‘then you don’t get to know.’ “Who was a real piece of work—dishonored his father: sin of all sins. Anyways, one night, he’s out being an asshole and he gets caught by a band of fairies. They give him the task of burying a corpse in a real specific place. If he doesn’t, he’ll lose his soul. They tell him that if he can’t bury it in this one place, he has to travel on until he finds somewhere else to bury it. So he schleps the thing on his back all night, goin’ here and there, literally raisin’ the dead and gettin’ tossed out of churches by ‘em, until he gets to the right final resting place for this dead guy. And after he buries him there, he’s free and scared stiff, so he changes his ways for the better and so on and so on.”

Sam’s face said that this was a shit story. Steve didn’t really know what to tell him. They couldn’t all be winners.

“Y’all need Jesus,” Sam decided.

“No, Jesus is part of the problem,” Steve said. “That’s how we got St. Patrick chasin’ all the snakes out of Ireland.”

Sam took a long, skeptical sip of coffee so he didn’t have to respond to that.

Buck cackled.

“Fuckin’ love it here,” he said. “The drama. The creativity. The rampant appropriation. Man, what’d I’d give to meet St. Patty.”

“We got places to be,” Sam announced, setting his mug down on the window sill. “Nelson texted. He said his mom’s making breakfast and doesn’t trust our host to feed us properly.”

Nelson’s family home was the kind of artistically messy that made Steve want paint. It was in chaos when they got there after about a mile’s walk. Bucky obviously missed the days of living in a house full of busy people with short tempers.

“We need a load of kids,” Buck told Steve and Sam as they waited through the racket inside for someone to answer their knock at the door.

“—what do you _mean_ he’s not dead?” someone—Nelson’s sister—demanded over her shoulder as she opened the door. “Well, if he’s not dead, I’m gonna kill him myself—oh, hello! Come in, come in. Mam! Captain America and his young men are here!”

Buck _loved_ being called a young man. He was just about radiant.

Sam needed to be reminded that this was a term of endearment, not flagrant flattery.

Mrs. Nelson—Anna, she said to call her—paused in threatening Nelson and his challenging eyebrows at the edge of the stove to greet them. She was a very good hugger, this little lady.

She also had eyes in the back of her head.

“Don’t you even think about it,” she snapped at Nelson who recoiled and lowered what Steve now saw to be a beanie. “I’m braidin’ it and that’s final, son. You can’t be going to the sea representin’ this family with no braids.”

“ _Ma_ ,” Nelson moaned. “Nobody goes to sea with braids anymore—nobody’s done it for a centuries.”

“Candace, you watch my bacon.”

“ _MA._ ”

“Anna, he don’t want the braids,” a bald man sitting at the table said firmly.

Nelson threw a hand his way as though he was presenting the final piece of evidence in court. Anna applied her hands to her hips in challenge.

A law degree clearly held no special weight in this particular court.

“Where’s Matthew?” Anna demanded.

“You can’t ask him ‘bout _my_ hair,” Nelson said.

“I can. I shall. And he will agree with me, just you wait. Where is the boy? Did you bring him?”

“No, I threw him into the sea on the way over.”

“KAREN.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake—”

“ _Franklin_.”

“Oh my god, Foggy!”

Steve couldn’t help but smile. It had been ages since he’d seen any family dynamics like this. He hid his smile behind a hand and accidentally caught the bald man at the table’s eye. He smiled back and his eyes crinkled all around their edges like a halo.

Murdock had not slept. He was pale and rattling. He kept forgetting what people were asking him halfway through their questions and, rather than ask for repetition, he just agreed with what they were saying.

Nelson was furious with him.

But selkie braids, Steve had to say, were beautiful. They were wrapped around each other and pinned into a low-sitting crown shape, then bedecked with flowers of all kinds and colors.

Sam told Nelson what he was the best Rapunzel in all the land. Nelson was too pissed to do anything by sneer at him.

Anna had brushed the fuck out of his hair. His nearly white hair, not the straw stuff that they usually saw him with. It was much longer and looked silkier, shinier, and Anna gave him the pretense of choice by asking him which flowers he wanted put in it. He said he didn’t care, they were just going to fall out anyways. You know. Like the braids.

She told him that they better not have any help.

Over breakfast, it was explained why the braid-ritual had been necessary.

They were going out to the lighthouse. The furthest point out into the sea. And then they were going for a swim for as far as it took to meet the great Manannán mac Lir.

A god of the sea.

Steve couldn’t say he wasn’t a little nervous upon receiving this information. Least of all because that water was going to be fucking _cold_.

No, he was nervous because Murdock seemed to be holding every one of his breaths for three counts at a time while pressing his lips against the side of his hand.

He did not want to do this. He was scared out of his mind. Steve felt for him. He nearly could feel his heart pounding across the table.

Murdock was blind. Combat skill be damned, jumping into the sea to face a god and tell them that yeah, he’d thrown the gift they’d given him right in their faces and he’d been wrong about that sounded like a nightmare. Just the first part had to be terrifying for a guy without sight. Sure, he’d have Nelson with him from the sounds of it, but the sea was unpredictable. If they got separated, the chances of him finding his way back were slim.

Had Sister Margaret known that this was what her kid would have to do?

If she had, why hadn’t she told him?

Or maybe the fear and the risk was the whole point?

“Matty,” Anna said suddenly. “You alright, love?”

No.

He was not.

He left them all abruptly to go puke in the bathroom.

The table winced.

“Foggy, you’ll protect him, right?” Candace asked quietly. “Do you want me to go with you guys? I can run home and grab my suit. It’s no trouble.”

Nelson stared after Murdock with tight lips. He caught the eye of Page with her fingers pressed carefully into her cheek.

“No. It’s okay. We’ve got this,” he said.

He sounded like he believed it, too.

“Is Grace meeting you all?” Anna asked him seriously.

Sam lifted an eyebrow and looked at Buck, then Steve.

“Yeah, she said she’ll be there.”

“And Jack?”

“Um,” Nelson said.

His father, whose name was Edward, it turned out, hummed.

“Jack’ll probably try to stop them,” he observed.

Steve felt out of the loop.

“Sorry, who’s Grace?” he asked.

The left half of the table looked back at him.

“Sister Maggie,” Nelson said. “People here call her Grace. It’s her middle name. Jack is her husband.”

Oh.

Right.

So Murdock’s father?

“That’s the one,” Anna said. “Lovely man. I’m sure you’ll meet him.”

Sam cleared his throat.

“You think he’ll try to interfere with this, er, mission?”

It was strange to use that kind of language in casual clothes, with non-Avengers people. But the selkie folk seemed okay with it.

“Jack’s very protective,” Anna said. “If he thinks Matty’s in distress, he’ll probably call for a time-out.”

Huh.

Sounded like a reasonable kind of guy.

“’Course it won’t matter, not with Grace,” Anna said, taking a dismissive sip of tea.

Or maybe not?

Murdock refused to eat anything once he came back from the bathroom. He was nearly white. He was so pale that Steve could actually see the light freckles that dotted his face. Anna tried to get him to take some food with him, but he made a gesture that was on the verge of a gag and she made him drink a cup of a nearly florescent green tea instead.

“What’s this?” Karen asked him when Anna had gone away with Nelson for something in another room.

“No idea,” Murdock sighed.

“Looks funny.”

“Tastes worse, here, try it,” Murdock said.

Page did. Page gagged.

This seemed to improve Murdock’s mood a little.

“Throw it out,” she hissed. “Here, give it to me. Quick, before they get back.”

Page was the real MVP of that trio. Buck seemed to like her more with each passing second.

They left the Nelson’s home for the sea. They didn’t go through town, though, and they didn’t pick up Peter or May Parker.

“No witches,” Nelson said over his shoulder as they hiked down the street and then up a hill towards what seemed to be a long stone cottage. It had dry stone walls up to about elbow height and a much more extensive, if water-logged, garden than his, Sam, and Buck’s B&B’s.

“Not good for sea gods. Bad snacks,” Karen said sagely.

Nelson flattened his eyebrows at her.

“No?” she asked. “Which part, the bad or the snacks?”

“They’re forest people,” Nelson said firmly.

“So is that an answer or a correction?” Page needled.

“Forest people,” Nelson repeated to her. “We’re going to a sea god. You decide.”

“We’re bringing a moor _fae_ ,” Karen said, waving a hand back at Buck. “Why’s he allowed to come?”

“He’s not getting in the water.”

“No?”

Buck shook his head. Steve was surprised. Sam was too.

“Not coming?” Sam asked him.

“I ain’t fucking with no sea god,” Bucky said. “I’ve got a new lease on life and I intend to keep on living it.”

Huh.

Good to know, then?

The stone cottage was a church. Sister Margaret emerged from the gardens after a while looking agitated and tearing off her habit.

Steve looked away immediately.

He couldn’t help it. It just felt wrong.

“What’s your mum done to your hair?” Sister Margaret asked Nelson without missing a beat.

“Exactly what you think,” Nelson said stiffly.

Steve peeked back and saw Sister Margaret frowning and cocking her head. She looked at her own son and, with her own hair loose in thick, dark brown waves, Steve could suddenly see the resemblance there.

“Do you want braids, Matty?” she asked him.

“I want to drown,” Red informed her.

She sniffed.

“Wish imminently granted,” she said. “Pray and so it shall be.”

Murdock’s jaw twitched.

“Thanks, Mum,” he said.

“You should have had Anna do Karen’s,” Sister Margaret added casually in Nelson’s direction. She had a duffle bag on her hip, Steve noticed. It was navy blue and old. “Then we really could have looked like we were coming from the 17th century.”

Nelson thought she was hilarious.

The path they were on led past the church and wound around the edges of several cliffs. The drop off of them was significant and the water down there was a deep, menacing, and almost artificial-looking blue. Somehow, there seemed to be steps chipped into the sides of the cliff faces despite these natural warning signs. Page asked Nelson who made them and he had no idea what she was talking about.

As far as he could remember, they’d always been there. They hadn’t been made. Sister Margaret agreed.

She actually remembered there being more of them.

Murdock said nothing about the steps. He held his white stick in one hand and wrapped the other’s fingers around Nelson’s elbow. Up as high as they were, it was windy and the grasses shook and rattled against each other. The shushing of the ocean was barely audible over it all.

The selkies gave no sign of stopping, even when the lighthouse came into sight.

It was old and white—bleached by the wind and sun and water. It seemed almost unconnected to the island, actually. It took some more turns before Steve could make out the sliver of land that connected it to the cove between all the rocks down below.

Murdock stopped walking around then and turned his face out towards the ocean.

“Is this the old home?” he asked his mother.

“Very close,” Sister Margaret said. “Fairy thorn first.”

“Do people live there now?” Murdock asked, and Steve realized he was referring to the lighthouse.

“Did you?” Sam asked him.

There was a pause.

Murdock turned his face away.

“Yes,” he said. “With my father.”

“No one lives there now,” Nelson said next to him. “A lab tried to set up shop, but we didn’t let them stay.”

Steve wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but his brain supplied the image of a load of seals beaching themselves and flopping their way up all those stairs to bay obnoxiously into clean room.

He tried to picture how Stark and Banner would cope with this scenario.

It was entertaining as fuck.

There was a tree, gnarled and leaning from the wind, set off by itself on a couple of yards in front the edge of the cliff immediately behind the lighthouse.nIt was blooming in pinks even though it was far too early in the spring for it. It barely moved in the wind and the petals that fell from it landed only in its shadow.

Steve’s shoulders shuddered and Page stopped walking with the selkies.

“What’s that?” she asked hesitantly, staying back by Steve. Sam came up next to them and didn’t go any further either. Steve could see tension in the muscles around his neck where they peeked out of his collar.

The others paused and looked back at the three of them.

It was as though a line had been drawn between their two groups.

“A fairy thorn,” Bucky said.

Steve thought he kind of remembered hearing about these. There was a wooden bowl set at the base of this one. It was filled to the brim with water and a couple of floating leaves.

“I don’t like it,” Page said quietly.

“You’re not supposed to,” Buck told her. “They’re not for humans.”

Murdock breathed sharply. Nelson jerked his way and touched his shoulder with a frown. Murdock didn’t seem to feel him; he clutched at his ribs, fingers digging into his jacket.

Nelson frowned hard and deferred to Sister Margaret.

“It didn’t use to hurt him,” he said.

“It isn’t hurting him now,” Sister Margaret said firmly.

“Sister—” Nelson started to argue.

“It’s not this,” Sister Margaret said in a tone that said that that was the end of this discussion. “Matthew, pull yourself together, son. There is still far to go.”

Murdock didn’t lift his head or drop his shoulders. Steve wanted to pull him back. Everything about him said that he was overwhelmed and possibly going to vomit.

“Woah now,” Sam interrupted smoothly. “Anxiety is a real thing with physical effects here. Why don’t we take a moment to regroup?”

Sister Margaret studied him.

“No,” Murdock gritted out behind her. “She’s right. I’m—this—I think it’s something else. Let’s just go on. The sooner it’s over the better.”

Murdock was a tough cookie, both as Daredevil and as just himself, Steve would give him that. He forced himself to breathe. He forced himself to loosen up and let go of his ribs.

Nelson brushed their cheeks together and he told him that he fine. Just a little shaky.

“This isn’t a gunshot wound, Matty,” Nelson said. “You’re allowed to tell me about this one.”

“I’m fine,” Murdock repeated, then paused. “This is where we met.”

Page perked up.

“Here?” she asked.

Murdock lifted a shoulder.

“Kind of,” he said. “Foggy was here. And I was down there.”

They all looked over to where the cliff dropped off.

Nelson laughed.

“We should have just met in the middle,” he said.

Murdock smirked.

“More fun to shout,” he said. “And anyways, _someone_ didn’t want me socializing with the locals.”

Sister Margaret ignored him.

“ _Someone_ also called me and Cand a ‘racket,’” Nelson added onto that.

Sister Margaret gave him a look that Steve knew well from his school days. It said, ‘have you finished yet?’

Steve wanted to warn Nelson of the ramifications of this expression. He clearly didn’t know how to fear it.

“The two of you were a racket and nothing but trouble waiting to happen,” Sister Margaret finally declared. “And now, neither of you is going to be a racket because you need to channel that into being trouble. Matt, you first.”

Murdock jerked back.

“Why me first?” he demanded. “Do Foggy first.”

“Excuse me?” Nelson snapped. “You approved these braids.”

“I’ll go first,” Bucky said over them irritably. “Ya fuckin’ children. Christ.”

He tossed his hair over his shoulder and strode forward right up to the wood bowl at the base of the tree. Sister Margaret followed him and waited as he knelt down so that she could reach his head. She dipped her hand into the wood bowl and produced from its bottom a tin cup.

“Your offering,” she said.

Bucky put a hand in his pocket and brought out the amulet that Nelson had given him weeks ago. He dropped it in the tin cup and it clanged against the bottom of it.

Sister Margaret had him lean forward and when she poured the water over his head, no stone fell out of the cup.

“Your offering has been received,” she told him.

Buck lifted his face and shook his head violently, sending water in all directions. Sam swore at him for the spray. Buck beamed at him innocently.

“I’ll do you, Sister,” he said.

Sister Margaret offered a little bunch of flowers—blue ones. Hydrangeas. Steve hadn’t seen any on the way up or in the village. Where had she gotten them?

They sunk, into the cup somehow.

Bucky poured water over her head and they were gone.

She did not spray them all like an asshole. She combed the water into her hair and turned expectantly towards the other two.

“Children,” she said.

Murdock grimaced.

“Alright fine,” Nelson said. “I’ll go.”

Nelson’s offering was something that glinted gold. He was careful not to dislodge all the flora in his hair when he came back up from the dousing.

Sister Margaret handed him the tin cup for Murdock.

Murdock knelt down and said a prayer.

He pressed the flat tops of his knuckles to his forehead and then carefully pulled a ribbon out of his shirt pocket. It was white and didn’t look especially expensive, but if he’d picked it specifically for this occasion, it must have had some kind of meaning to it. He held it out to Nelson and Nelson brought the cup to it and then brought it up to swallow the ribbon.

“Here’s to hoping,” he told Murdock. “Scream if it burns, okay?”

Murdock laughed nervously.

Nelson tipped the cup over his head.


	4. down to depths of blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You sealin’ up, Fogs?” she asked excitedly.  
> Nelson stared at her.  
> “No,” he said. “It’s two feet of water, Kare."

The water rolled off of Murdock’s auburn hair like water off a duck’s back at first, but then it soaked in.

He did not scream.

He seemed surprised. He lifted his face towards the tree stump in front of him in confusion.

“Guess you didn’t get any more human after all, bud,” Nelson said with a smile.

“It didn’t hurt,” Murdock told him.

“I know, I was there,” Nelson said.

“It didn’t hurt!” Murdock yipped, bouncing back up to his feet and grabbing for Nelson’s hands. Nelson gave them to him laughing.

“What’s happening?” Page mumbled to Steve out of the corner of her mouth.

“I have no idea,” he murmured back to her from behind a hand.

“I’m gonna touch it, cover me,” Page whispered like a fucking _champ_.

Steve wanted her on the Avengers. Stat.

Page was thwarted by her friends lunging forward shouting ‘DON’T TOUCH IT’ at the same time. Sister Margaret and Buck swiftly removed her from the fairy thorn’s shade.

Apparently, if the wrong hands ended up in that water, they could soon belong to a very cursed, potentially very dead, body.

Sam took notes on his phone.

The fact that Murdock stood now, neither dead nor cursed, was proof that he was still selkie enough to feasibly ask for his coat back. Living in human form for so long hadn’t changed the base of him enough to move the needle for him, so to speak.

This was good, Sister Margaret said, except for where it was bad.

“You have a job now,” she told her son sternly once the celebrations and panic had faded away. “What’s your job?”

“Don’t drown,” Murdock said promptly, like he and she had practiced this discussion.

“Don’t drown,” Sister Margaret confirmed. “Now, off with you. You know the way from here—AH. No. Nevermind, Franklin, you go first.”

They were going to climb down the cliff.

Steve didn’t recall free-climbing being mentioned before this point.

“It’s not free-climbing,” Nelson promised him, Sam and their visible concern. “There’s a path down, it’s just narrow. And not great for—Matty. _Wait_.—it’s a little unstable is what I’m saying. Listen ahead and step where we step and you’ll be fine.”

Buck wanted to roll right off the cliff. He thought that this would be far quicker, not to mention easier.

“Go on then, hound, see if we stop you,” Nelson told him scathingly.

Buck did not roll off the cliff. Buck complained for the entire half hour it took them not to fall to tragic deaths from the cliff face.

“This is fun,” Sam kept saying in a tone that was convincing no one, not even himself.

Steve didn’t know how Murdock hadn’t eaten shit yet. Sure, he was safely bracketed between his two buddies up ahead, and yeah, he had a stick and Nelson’s hand guiding him through the tricky bits of terrain, but man.

Even Steve didn’t quite know where to put his feet and he was looking right at them.

He cursed his mother for leaving him in Brooklyn with next to no cliff-hiking experience, then took it back because she’d lived in Dublin the first half of her life and then Brooklyn right beside him for the second half. She hadn’t done much cliff-hiking to start with. He hoped instead that she was watching him from the afterlife, cackling and cheering him on.

That was better, much better.

Right up until the stone underneath his foot gave way.

He didn’t fall.

Thank _fuck_ , he didn’t fall. Bucky’s metal arm crushed into the skin around on his arm, though, even through the layers of wool and jersey there.

“Not today, Manannán,” Bucky growled down at the water. “He’s mine, asshole. You got a better offering headed your way. Have some fuckin’ patience.”

Oho.

Not comforting. Definitely not comforting. As far from comforting as humanly possible.

“Steve? You okay?”

He looked ahead to Sam’s furrowed brow.

“F-fine,” he stammered.

“I got him,” Buck said. “Big step, Stevie. ‘Round the asshole move. Careful now.”

It took a wider step and a whole lot of faith to get across the new gap in the deer path. Sam’s hands caught him on the other side, which brought a little wave of comfort.

Buck swearing down at the rushing waves was a little comforting, too.

He wasn’t scared of the sea god, apparently. And since Steve’s soul was his, he thought that he shouldn’t be either.

He took a deep breath and followed Sam’s cautious steps down the rest of the cliff.

They dropped off into driftwood, ancient seaweed, and sand. It smelled rank. The selkies didn’t notice. Page yanked her scarf up over her face in disgust. She asked Murdock if this was how he felt riding the train.

He said yes, but there was never any escape.

She told him that she’d buy him a drink when they were done there.

“Not gonna want a drink if all goes according to plan,” Murdock told her.

“How do we get to the lighthouse from here?” Page asked, squinting out at the tall white building.

“Well, sometimes you can walk,” Murdock said.

“Tide’s too high,” Nelson added. “We’re going to have a quick dip.”

Page dropped her scarf.

“You sealin’ up, Fogs?” she asked excitedly.

Nelson stared at her.

“No,” he said. “It’s two feet of water, Kare. We’re just gonna slog through it.”

Page huffed and tossed her arm through Murdock’s.

“We’ve been here for 18 hours and there hasn’t been a single seal,” she grumbled.

Murdock was baffled.

“There’s been four seals,” he said.

“ _Real_ seals, Matthew. Real ones. With fins.”

“Flippers,” Murdock corrected.

“ _Fins_.” Page lamented. “Not a single fin among these people. Not so much as a webbed toe.”

Murdock didn’t know what to do for her.

“I’ll catch you a fish?” he tried.

“Ugh. No, Matthew. Clearly we’ve got a slog to do. God. Come on, man. Why do I even bother?”

Murdock let her go ahead of him. Sister Margaret then let her fall right into the water that covered the sandbar to the lighthouse.

It wasn’t two feet deep, it was more like two and half and it was freezing cold. Pretty, yes. But freezing. Steve’s fingers hurt and they’d only been wet for a few seconds.

The selkies gave not a single shit about the clothes they wore. Nelson and Sister Margaret gave no sign that they even felt the cold.

The other side of the sandbar turned into a pebbly beach. The shells and rocks underfoot crunched and hurt like hell until Steve got his shoes back on. The selkies, he noted, did not put footwear back on.

Bucky looked up at the lighthouse.

It stood towering and lonely.

“You used to live here, Red?” he asked without dropping his gaze.

Murdock hummed.

“It was cheap,” he said. “My dad cleaned the place up and maintained it for the village and they let us live there.”

“Must have been a lot of work,” Buck said.

“He thought so,” Murdock said. “It was the biggest place I ever lived, back then and even now, that’s for sure. Feels so much colder now.”

Steve couldn’t imagine it as anything but cold, honestly. But he thought that maybe, for a scrawny little kid with big dreams, it might have seemed more like an adventure than an ivory tower pushed away by the village that owned it.

“Won’t stay that way for long,” Sister Margaret said. “Jack? Come on out now. You’re home.”

Murdock perked up.

“You’re putting him back up there?” he asked.

“Going to need some light to get back here,” she said. “Time can get heavy where we’re going.”

Steve didn’t like the sound of that.

He jumped when Sam swore at his right.

“Man, what the hell? Where’d you even come from?” Sam asked the man suddenly standing behind the three of them, staring up at the lighthouse beside Bucky.

Buck took a step away from him.

He was tall. And broad and—

Hold on.

“This is my mate, Matthew’s father,” Sister Margaret introduced. “You may remember him from him trying to fight the god of storms.”

This fucker had tried to pick one with Thor.

This guy.

But how could Steve see him now? Before, he’d just been a blur of movement and now he was a bulkier version of Murdock over there with hooded eyes, a crooked nose, and a thicker jaw.

“You take me out of one cage just to throw me in a taller one?” Murdock’s father asked in an accent broad enough to lay on.

Steve decided abruptly that he didn’t care anymore.

He loved this man, regardless of his empty head. He sounded like home. 1930s home. Home before the war, with its sweltering streets and thrown open windows and smoking on the fire escape, begging for a breeze.

Steve hadn’t heard an accent like that coming out of a guy so young in what felt like a lifetime.

“They can see you now, Jack,” Sister Margaret said. “I dropped the glimmer.”

Jack finally noticed Steve and Sam and Bucky staring at him in shock and awe.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Hi.”

“We’re going to need some light,” Sister Margaret said over Buck’s little wave.

“You got a mirror?” Jack asked smooth as sin.

Page melted. Sister Margaret didn’t even acknowledge the compliment.

“Real light. Big light,” she said. “Think you can get the rust bucket turning again?”

Jack didn’t take the brush-off to heart; he considered the lighthouse, rubbing at his hard jaw.

“Maybe,” he said. “Depends on how bad the wiring is. If I can’t, I guess I can figure something else out. How far out are you going?”

“Far,” Sister Margaret said.

Jack’s chill evaporated.

“How far?” he demanded.

“I just told you,” Sister Margaret said.

“’Far’ ain’t a measurement.”

“Do I look like I’ve got a tape measure on me?”

“I dunno your life, Grace.”

Sister Margaret’s flat face said that he damn well did and she was not interested in entertaining him being a blockhead at the moment.

“Far,” she repeated. “A couple miles, probably.”

Jack didn’t like that. The corner of his lip said that for him.

“That’s too far. Matty’ll drown,” he said.

“I ain’t gonna drown,” Murdock snapped.

“He’s not going to drown, Jack,” Sister Margaret said.

“I didn’t agree to him drowning,” Jack maintained.

“Dad, I’m not going to drown,” Murdock said.

“I will not let our son drown. I swear,” Sister Margaret said like it pained her. “Now go fix the light. Take the hound with you. He’s already making us more visible than we need to be.”

Steve respected how unwilling Jack was to let this argument go. He did. If he had a blind kid, he wouldn’t be thrilled about sending him out to sea either.

“Fine,” Jack finally said. “I’ll fix your fancy flashlight. Don’t kill my kid.”

Oh, ownership discussions now.

Exciting.

“I’ll work on it,” Sister Margaret said, “We need to leave. We may be gone for a while. Karen will stay with you. Teach her how to sing for the sea. Stíofan and Samuel will come with us, but they’ll need calmer waters. Foggy will stay with them until he is called for.”

Nelson saluted Steve and Sam with a hand and a wink.

“Maidiú, say goodbye to your father and Karen. Then come with me, we’ve got a ways to go,” Sister Margaret said.

Red gave Karen and his dad a hug. He pressed his white cane forward into Jack’s hand. Jack told him to avoid sharks. And whales. And fishing nets. And fishermen. And propellers—and actually, just boats. Avoid boats. Unless he was drowning, in which case, maybe avoid them slightly less.

Red told him to relax. He left them to follow Sister Margaret through the rocks that guarded the shore; he stumbled a bit on the shells and pebbles, but he didn’t fall.

“That’s our cue,” Nelson said. “We got a cave to find.”

Nelson took Steve and Sam stumbling between rocks for what felt like almost half a mile. Only when Steve looked back over his shoulder did he realize that they’d somehow made it back onto the other side of the sandbar again. He hadn’t even noticed what with all the tidepools he was trying not to fall into.

Sam caught his shoulder to steady himself and looked back to see what he was looking at.

“Are you serious?” he grumbled. “We could’ve just sloshed back through the water?”

“Not touching the water yet,” Nelson said behind him. “It’s not safe. We need to let Sister Maggie go ahead first.”

Okay, but like, why?

“She’s favored by the island,” Nelson said. “It will feel her intent and guide her and Matt where they need to be. She’ll call for us and then we can meet them there.”

Fun.

Hey, quick question: How the hell were Sam and Steve supposed to not drown on this adventure?

“Oh,” Nelson said. “That’s step three.”

Step three?

What the hell was step one and two?

“Find the cave,” Nelson said, counting off his fingers. “Put on the coat. Then step three.”

Coat?

WAIT.

 _Coat_?

Nelson was going to seal-up right there in front of them?

Nelson’s lip curled in disgust.

“I need to keep you all away from Karen,” he said. “You’re bad influences on each other.”

“That is not answering the question, sir,” Sam pointed out.

Nelson scoffed.

“You’ll see,” he said. “Stop lagging.”

There was a cave a ways away from where they’d touched down from the cliff-face. Its mouth was half-sunken under water but the inside was spacious and tall. There were old sticks jammed horizontally between the closest two walls, climbing up to a couple of feet above the sandy floor of the place.

A damp set of sneakers spun listlessly back and forth from one of these sticks.

Nelson took off his backpack.

“Suit up,” he told them.

Nelson had been very specific with packing instructions back in New York. He’d said to bring a wetsuit. One for some serious cold water.

Having splashed through some of that now, Steve was not excited about the journey ahead. The only relief was that the wetsuit in his bag was drier than the clothes he was wearing at the moment. Nelson said that they could hang their clothes on the wooden lines above.

They wouldn’t dry, he said, but they wouldn’t have to go into their bags to soak through the rest of their things.

He did not put on a wetsuit.

Steve didn’t turn around his way right away out of politeness, but when he did, boy, howdy.

Now _that_ was a coat.

Sam whistled.

“Could see you from miles away, Fogs,” he said.

“Yeah? Guess who else can: whales,” Nelson huffed.

Well, that had taken a sharp turn.

“That a problem for you out here?” Sam asked a little hesitantly.

“Not right now,” Nelson said. “It’s after pupping season, they’ve already moved on.”

Oh. Lovely.

“Relax,” Nelson told Steve. “Most whales are super chill.”

That was not comforting. Did he seriously think that was comforting?

“Give me your hand.”

Hell no. Fancy coat or no, Steve wasn’t chancing those teeth.

Nelson dead-eyed him.

“Give me your hand,” he repeated.

“You gonna bite it?” Steve asked him.

“Cap. Give me your hand.”

“You are, aren’t you?”

Nelson sighed.

“You can’t hold your breath for long enough and deep enough for where we’re going,” he said. “The Sister and I need someone to stay with Matt while we go up to breathe and check for nets. It’s going to be a while. Give me your hand.”

He was actually going to bite it. Holy shit. Everything in Steve screamed not to move, not to unzip his suit enough to show skin.

But a deal was a deal.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begged.

Nelson laughed.

This asshole had some fucking chompers. Good _god_.

“It’ll heal,” Nelson promised Steve and Sam through their suffering.

“It burns,” Sam snapped. “Do you brush those things?”

Nelson held out to them two green, leaf-wrapped bundles barely the size of a pinky knuckle.

“Press it to the wound,” he said.

Inside the bundles was a powdery substance. It was black like soot, but somewhat gritty. Sam prayed for his hand aloud as he rubbed the stuff into the blood.

“Keep the leaf on your palm when you put it back in your suit,” Nelson said.

They did. A little awkwardly. It felt wrong. A little sticky.

“What was that?” Sam asked Nelson when both his and Steve’s suits were zipped back up. Nelson fiddled with a bluish pearl caged in gold hanging down from the front of his coat. The coat overlapped over his chest. It was hard to see how it stayed that way. There didn’t seem to be anything on the outside besides that little gold cage and the blue glass bead that sat on top of it, so maybe there were clasps on the inside?

“Oh, you know,” Nelson said demurely. “Just a little bit of hair.”

What.

What kind of hair?

Nelson beamed at them.

Selkie fur.

They’d rubbed burned selkie fur into their open wounds.

“I’m going home,” Sam said. “I’m flying home right now. Soon as I get outta this cave, I am flying or swimming across the Atlantic. None of y’all can change my mind.”

Nelson could not care less; he was alternating between listening intently to the mouth of the cave and fastidiously combing bits of his coat with his hands.

Sam huffed at him and turned his fury onto Steve.

“JB better be miserable,” he said.

Steve hoped so too.

This was all in his name, after all.

It was another ten awkward minutes or so of Nelson pointedly refusing to answer any seal questions or to rise to any seal-jokes when he startled to life and scampered hurriedly over to the edge of the cave’s sand. He listened intently.

“Come on,” he said. “She calls. I can hear her.”

Steve, for some reason, thought that a selkie shifting would be an event of some kind. Like the cover of one of those Animorph books Sam’s nieces were obsessed with.

It didn’t occur to him that it would look like a splash and that was it.

There was now a white seal at the mouth of the cave looking back at him and Sam with black, liquid eyes like they were holding it back.

“Efficient,” Sam noted.

Nelson jerked his head towards the mouth of the cave impatiently.

“Is it Timmy?” Sam asked.

Seals were much more vengeful than dogs and much better at throwing water with a vengeance.

The upside was that being soaked by a selkie’s fury meant that getting into the water wasn’t as horrible as it could have been. The downside was that there was no turning back now.

Nelson was much bigger up close and, as a seal, had many fewer boundaries. He came up and bumped against Steve constantly, nudging, nudging, _nudging_ , until he shoved back and then nudging, nudging, nudging at Sam until he took a breath and went under.

Steve barely caught his own breath before he was dragged down.

Panic was his first feeling.

He had a thing with water.

He had a thing with not being able to breathe.

His nightmares liked to put those two things together with ice.

It was a _great_ time.

The ice didn’t come this time, though, and after the first couple of seconds, nor did the contracting lungs.

The nudging returned and Steve was shocked to open his eyes and find that he could see Nelson, glowing white, underwater. He was very insistent.

He rolled a bit and made an awkward waving gesture with a bony flipper. He rolled the other way to make the same gesture at Sam and then flattened himself out with purpose.

They failed to catch on.

Nelson noticed this and made the gestures all over again: Point, point. Point, point. Turbo-seal.

It was very cute. It was not the appropriate situation for being very cute, but it was still pretty fucking cute.

Sam suddenly flailed in understanding and kicked forward a bit to wrap an arm around Nelson’s thick neck.

Oh.

He wanted them to grab on.

Oh no.

No, no. Steve wasn’t ready for this.

Seals swam fast, man.

Probably even faster with motivation, which Nelson certainly had.

He also had a sense for when Sam and Steve needed to breathe and took them all rocketing upward to break the surface for a couple of gasps through choppy water before they went back down into the dark. He did that a couple of times.

If they hadn’t been in such a hurry, Steve might have called the dark blue heaviness they moved through peaceful. They soared around a glittering school of fish, then right through the middle of another. They pressed forward past an enormous, bumpy, slightly terrifying dark shape that speed eventually revealed to be an honest to god whale.

Its eye was like nothing Steve could have ever imagined.

They broke surface not long after passing the whale and Nelson looked around in every direction before barking. It was an alarming noise. Sam threw hands over his ears reflexively.

Nelson ducked back down into the water when he was done and waited, letting it lift and drop all three of them. It was much calmer out where they were now than where they had been before. The rush and shush of water was still loud around them, but the waves didn’t throw them every which way or try to choke out their breath.

A bark called back to them.

Nelson went wild and hopped up, barking with more vigor.

Then he shut up and waited again, looking almost bashful with such round eyes.

A single bark came back.

Nelson went still, listening hard.

No bark followed that one.

A slightly larger wave crashed over his head and suddenly, Steve was looking at a white face. A human face.

Nelson tossed his long soaked hair over his shoulder and turned black eyes like marbles onto Sam and Steve.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.


	5. offer your blood for a ruby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Samuel, we need your help,” Sister Maggie panted. “Give me your hand. Please. He’s dying.”

Where was Matt?

Where was Matt?

Why wasn’t Matt calling back?

Was he underwater?

How long had he been under?

He only had six minutes in his lungs in this shape—longer obviously than most humans, but it had to have been at least four since they’d gotten out far enough for Foggy to call out for him and the Sister and Foggy couldn’t see the shape of any heads or bodies above or below water.

He called for the Sister again.

She didn’t answer.

“Count,” he told the other two, trying not to panic.

“Count?” Sam repeated.

“JUST COUNT.”

“Woah. Okay, we’re counting.” 

Foggy dropped down under the surface while they counted. He couldn’t count as a seal. The numbers all slid together like liquid.

He kicked away from the other two for a ways and searched around the depths. They were out pretty far from the island. There was the occasional string of deep-sea kelp swaying in the current, dragging the little handfuls of fish that gathered under their leaves back and forth with them, but beyond that, there was nothing.

No significant trails of bubbles.

No dark shapes in the distance.

That was wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong—Foggy couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t _breathe_.

He broke surface again in human form and searched for the humans. They were a ways off. Steve saw him first and threw up a hand.

Foggy ducked back down and hurried over that way. When he came up by them, Sam told him that it had been nearly two hundred seconds.

Two hundred.

More than three minutes.

No.

No, that couldn’t be right.

“Shit,” he gasped. “Shit, shit, _shit_.”

They were drowning. Matt was drowning.

“Nelson, what’s going on?” Cap asked seriously.

“I don’t know,” Foggy said with his hair trying to wrap itself around his neck from the current. “But Matt can only hold his breath for six minutes. He hasn’t come up. I can’t find him or the Sister. They aren’t answering me.”

“Franklin!”

All three of their heads turned at the same time.

Foggy could count on his hands the number of times he’d seen Sister Maggie shift into human form in the water itself. She usually waited until land and she often stayed out later or came in earlier than him and any of the others.

Her hair was slick now and it curled around her cheeks even after she tossed it out of her face.

“Sister?” he shouted over the rush of the water.

Steve broke away from their group to meet her and pull her in close enough to talk.

“What’s happened?” Foggy asked her.

“Samuel, we need your help,” Sister Maggie panted. “Give me your hand. Please. He’s dying.”

Sister Maggie took Sam. She told Foggy to take Steve and hurry.

There were no questions asked.

Even through the coat and all the blubber, Foggy’s chest and throat felt ice cold. Steve didn’t need instruction. He caught onto Foggy’s seal neck and let himself be dragged through the water after Sister Maggie’s bubble trail.

As they got closer to where Sister Maggie was taking them, Foggy started to see the little dots of fish.

They gathered around the lingering scent of blood. Waiting.

Fuck.

Matty, no. Not yet. They’d barely even gotten started.

Foggy and Steve didn’t break surface so much as they were hurled by a sudden surging wave up onto a rock heap. It was an island, Foggy realized, shoving himself up and slinging hair and kelp out of his face. There were bodies kneeling ahead. He took no time scrambling to his feet and running over there.

He startled back a few feet away from them.

Sister Maggie and Sam were leaned over the lap of a giant.

A giant in the literal sense of the word. A towering man, eight, maybe nine feet tall with huge shoulders and enormous hands and orange hair pouring down his back. There were gold threads woven in among his braids.

It wasn’t just any giant.

“Manannán mac Lir,” he whispered.

The giant lifted his face. It wasn’t old. It was half-hidden by a beard, but despite that, Foggy could see that it was crossed with pain.

Manannán dropped his eyes sadly back to his lap where his enormous hands were cradling Matt’s body.

Foggy’s breath caught in his throat.

“Matty?” he gasped. “Maidiú? _Maidi_ _ú_?”

Nothing. Matt didn’t gasp or writhe in response to his name.

“Maidiú!” Foggy cried.

Still nothing. Nothing, even from Matt’s mate.

“I’m so sorry, selkie,” Manannán said long and slow. “I’m so sorry.”

There was a broken spear crushed into Matt’s side. The water mixed with the blood and stained his whole torso. It dripped down in slick ribbons from the darkness of his wetsuit.

No.

No, no, no, no, _no_.

Foggy shoved forward to get hands on Matt’s face. To press their foreheads together.

His skin was cold. His lips were cold.

Sister Maggie pulled Foggy back and told him quietly to leave Matt be for now. Sam was working. They needed to trust Sam to work. He knew more about human healing than they did.

Foggy wanted to scream.

“You killed him,” he choked out to Manannán instead. “You _killed_ him.”

“It was an accident,” Sister Maggie said.

“You’re defending him?” Foggy asked her, not even angry anymore. Just cold. His chest had gone cold and solid.

“This is his mate,” Sister Maggie said to Manannán _._ “They’re young.”

“I see that,” Manannán said heavily. He adjusted the huge, rough hand cradling Matt’s shoulders tenderly like he was holding an infant.

Foggy didn’t understand.

Why was everyone just standing here, being silent? Why? Matt was dying. Matt was _dying_.

“I’m so sorry, selkie-child,” Manannán said to him suddenly.

“What did you do to him?” Foggy demanded.

Manannán’s pain-ridden face crumpled further. Sister Maggie turned Foggy’s way with a warning written on hers.

“It’s no one’s fault,” she said fiercely. “We should have been louder in our warning.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Foggy snapped.

“He surprised me,” Manannán’s soft heavy voice said. Foggy jerked his face up him again. “He surprised me,” the giant repeated. “I acted too swiftly. Poor boy. He can’t call under the water in this shape.”

No.

No, he couldn’t.

Fuck.

Goddamnit.

_FUCK._

“Nelson, breathe,” Sam ordered out of nowhere. His voice startled Foggy and brought him back to himself.

“He’s going to live,” Sam said firmly, “Provided we get the wound clean and get him to a hospital asap.”

“We can’t,” Foggy said. “We’re too far out.”

“Seal something up,” Sam told him.

It wasn’t that easy.

“Can’t you do something?” Foggy snarled at Manannán _._

Manannán looked at him with clear eyes the color of the sky at sunset.

“I have done enough,” he said. “I do not expect you to forgive me for my carelessness. But I will take the boy to _T_ _ír na n_ _Óg_ myself on your behalf, selkie. He will be safe there. I will make sure he is safe.”

Foggy and Sister Maggie shouted an immediate negative at the same time. They startled the humans.

“You can’t take him,” Foggy gasped. “He’s mine to take.”

“He isn’t human,” Sister Maggie said over him. “You can’t take him, he can’t stay there.”

Manannán frowned between them.

“What is happening here?” he asked.

“Matt’s my—” Foggy started

“Maidiú has no coat, Manannán,” Sister Maggie interrupted with a set to her brow so deep and firm that Foggy shut up immediately.

Silence, selkie-child, that look said, the adults are talking now.

But Matt was _dying_ , Sister.

“No coat?” Manannán repeated as Sam did something and for the first time, Matt whimpered.

Relief swept through Foggy’s chest and crashed into the wave of panic on the other side at the sound.

“Why has the boy no coat? He is your human child, is he not, selkie?” Manannán asked.

“He is half,” Sister Maggie said fiercely. “He gave his coat away in a moment of foolish, youthful pride. We came to you to ask for a Task to retrieve it.”

Manannán’s brow furrowed and his beard twitched.

“He wants to return to us,” he said.

“Yes,” Sister Maggie said. “His rightful place is among us. If you take him to _T_ _ír na n_ _Óg_ now, he will be trapped there as a human. But he is one of us, Manannán _._ ”

Manannán fell quiet and adjusted Matt slightly to let Sam do whatever it was that he was doing more easily. Sam didn’t acknowledge him. Sam had his work in front of him and he would not be torn from it.

Foggy wished he had that kind of tenacity.

“I understand. My grief for you knows no bounds, selkie,” Manannán said with his face down towards Matt. “But as much as it pains me, I cannot return to him his coat in this moment.”

“We aren’t asking you to,” Sister Maggie said.

Manannán lifted his head her way.

“Your child will die,” he said.

“He will not. He’s tougher than he looks,” Sister Maggie countered. “Like his father.”

“A hero,” Manannán said slowly.

Sister Maggie held his eye.

“Make a deal with me,” she said. “On behalf of my pup, who you have wounded out of carelessness. Give him a task to rejoin his people.”

Manannán sighed heavily.

“Selkie, you know I cannot make deals,” he said.

“You can,” Sister Maggie snapped. “You were once human, and among our people, amends can be made. You’ve taken my pup. I ought to curse you and your _foul_ dogs for the next century and a half. I ought to take the life of one of _your_ descendants in return for the one you have nearly taken from me. But I won’t. I am asking instead that you make a deal with me. Give my child a Task. Before he dies, Manannán.”

“I have no task for selkies,” Manannán said. “I have only tasks for humans. For heroes.”

“I’ll do it.”

Foggy shivered. He and the others looked behind them.

Steve set his jaw. Foggy stopped breathing.

Manannán tilted his giant head to the side. He surveyed Steve.

“You are a hero?” he asked.

“You’re damn right I am,” Steve said, more Brooklyn than ever on an island an entire generation removed from his body.

Manannán frowned.

“You are a hero of the island?” he rephrased.

“Can be,” Steve said as stupid and brave and human as ever.

“I only have—”

“Listen, sir. I talk like an asshole, but my folks are from here. And I’m a hero. What needs to be done?” Steve said.

“You don’t feel a hero,” Manannán observed.

Steve puffed up in insult.

“That ain’t your call to make,” he said. “Gimme Red’s task.”

“I can’t give you someone else’s Task,” Manannán said a bit flatly, understandably though, because Steve was a _hulking idiot_.

“Give him a task so that we can heal this guy, then,” Sam ordered.

“You heard the man,” Steve said. “I’ve made a deal with the Sister to protect her son. I’ll trade with you for his healing if not his coat.”

Foggy’s heart shuddered. He realized everything had gone still. Gone quiet around them. He looked back to Manannán. His eyes had changed from the yellowish green of sunset to the first line of sunrise. Blue and red, red, red, then pink on the horizon.

“What is your name, human?” he asked.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” Steve said. “Time’s a tickin’, your honor. If you wouldn’t mind?”

Steve. No, honey. This is a sea god.

Just shut _up_.

“Steven,” Manannán said, suddenly shifting. He slid Matt out of his lap and onto the rock beneath them. Sam went with him.

Manannán stood.

He towered.

The ocean around the rock island began to grow wild.

“It is a good name for you,” Manannán said to Steve. He stepped forward and Steve held his ground with a jaw steady as stone itself.

“You are tied to a hound,” Manannán observed.

“More or less,” Steve said.

“It is fate which has brought us here.”

Steve scoffed.

“Sure, pal. Whatever you want,” he said. “My friend’s dyin’, though. So can we hurry this up?”

Steve, Steve, Steve, _no_.

Sister Maggie put a hand on Foggy’s arm, demanding silence.

“I am missing a hound from my two,” Manannán said mournfully.

Steve frowned.

“And you…want mine?” he asked. “Sorry, no can do there—”

“No, I don’t want yours,” Manannán said a little indulgently. “But a human has taken one of mine. If you will retrieve it, then I can open a holy well for this selkie.”

A holy well.

Well, shit. Yeah, that would do it.

“Is that good?” Steve asked Foggy and Sister Maggie over his shoulder. They both nodded hurriedly.

“Okay, great,” Steve said. “I’ll do it. I find your dog, you open a well for Red. We have a deal?”

Manannán’s beard twitched again. His eyes started shifting towards dawn. They twinkled a bit and the seas around the island began to die down once again. He turned back towards Foggy and the others.

“You were wise to bring these humans with you,” he told them. He turned, smiling, back to Steve. “It is a deal, Steven. Find my hound. The well has opened. Take the selkie-child to it and let him bathe in the waters until he is healed. Then, selkie, your child may return and in return for my carelessness, I shall discuss with him a Task.”

“You know,” Sam said, petting Matt’s hair absently about forty minutes later, “This probably one of the few times ableism has worked to this guy’s advantage.”

Foggy considered it.

Sam had been violently resistant to putting his patient into water at first, believing that doing so would make him bleed out faster, but he’d given in and trusted Foggy and the Sister. His attempt at humor meant that he was in better spirits.

“You’re not wrong,” Foggy. said.

Matt said nothing. Matt was very busy being vastly unhappy and stuck chest-high in freezing cold brackish well water. He was conscious again, thank god. Conscious if weak and more than a little bleary. He had to conserve all his energy for swearing and shivering and very occasionally asking Sister Maggie why God had forsaken them.

“How do I find a dog in a sea of dogs?” Steve asked himself from the other side of the well.

“You,” Sam said, “Need to stop talking. Every time you talk, we get coerced into another bullshit errand.”

Steve thought about this with the tips of his fingers skirting along the surface of the holy well’s water.

Manannán’s well was hidden in a cave on his stone island. He didn’t take them there. He’d watched them go before being consumed again by the sea. His well was much, much warmer than the sea, thankfully. It was filled with candles with flickering flames and old pottery and sand and shrines chipped into the walls with offerings to the sea gods tucked into them.

A child’s sneaker here. A yo-yo there. A pile of sand and kelp covered chew-toys given by folks who evidently preferred Manannán’s hounds over the man himself there.

Matt shivered in the well among thick ropes of green algae and reeds and duckweed that had no right or reason to be growing such a sunless place. It was like they were sustained by the candle light somehow.

“Okay, how’s this,” Steve said to Sam, “How about from now on, you make the deals?”

“Great idea,” Sam said. “I love that idea. That is the best idea you’ve had in five years.”

Sam decided that, as the new maker of deals and herder of wayward and poorly-behaved Rogerses, they needed to wait until the well-waters had healed Matt enough to remove the spearhead from his side. Matt moaned at the thought. Sam told him he no longer knew how else to help him because all his attempts at first aid had been crushed by a literal giant with a beard and an unhealthy dog-attachment.

So for now, Matt was staying in the well waters. And once he was no longer a pin cushion, they needed to go talk to Manannán again, this time without accidentally tumbling into his space and becoming swiss cheese.

Matt claimed that, in his defense, he hadn’t exactly been able to see the glowing boundary Manannán put up around him under water.

It was a pretty good defense.

“I was ready to sing and everything,” Matt moaned during Foggy’s turn of holding his head and shoulders so that he didn’t slip back into the well water and drown.

“Maybe God didn’t forsake us,” Foggy said. “Maybe this is his way of sparing us greater harm.”

Matt huffed.

“I can sing,” he claimed.

Sister Maggie coughed.

“I _can_ ,” Matt growled her way.

“Mm-hm,” Foggy hummed indulgently. “You’re such a good singer.”

Matt pouted. Sam lifted an eyebrow Foggy’s way.

“Imagine a skunk givin’ Elvis a go,” Foggy said.

“Let go, I’m drowning,” Matt decided.

It took about two hours. Matt dozed a lot during them. Foggy didn’t let anyone else have a turn to hold him up. He’d decided that he wasn’t letting Matt go. Ever again.

Ever.

Sister Maggie told him he was being dramatic. Foggy graciously did not point out that he wasn’t the one who’d tried to blackmail a god of the sea.

She and Matt were more similar than either of them would ever admit.

When the two hours were up and Matt’s assailant, the spearhead, could be plucked out of his side, he got to rejoin everyone else on land. Foggy started to take off his coat to let Matt burrow into it for warmth, as he was wont, but Matt just crawled into both it and Foggy’s lap and stayed there for another fifteen minutes or so until he stopped shivering.

Sam thought that that was very cute.

Matt told him to shove it, but his protests were muffled by fur.

“I want to be suffocated in a fur coat, Steven,” Sam told Steve, who’d gotten bored with not having any immediate danger to throw himself into and had started cataloguing all the offerings in the shrines.

“How very 20s of you,” Steve said. “I’ll find you one.”

Round two talking to Manannán out by his stone throne went better, mostly because Manannán’s mood had improved.

Unfortunately, however, this was due to the fact that he had succumbed to the tendency of apparently all giants to coo over selkie pups.

Exhausting.

Matt was fucking done. Foggy was fucking done. Sam and Steve and Sister Maggie had the nerve to giggle at their plight.

“I’m not a seal,” Matt snarled, pushing Manannán’s hands away from squishing his face. “But I _will_ be, if you give me a task. Give me a task.”

Sister Maggie told him to watch his mouth.

Manannán seemed charmed by his cheek.

“It has been years since I’ve met a selkie with such personality,” he told Sister Maggie because apparently Matt and Foggy were children who weren’t allowed to talk to sea gods.

Fucking.

 _Exhausting_.

“He gets it from me,” Sister Maggie said.

Manannán smiled at her.

“They call you ‘Grace,’” he said. “I remember your song. You’ve led the way to _T_ _ír na n_ _Óg_ many a year.”

“I have,” Sister Maggie said.

“Why did you stop leading?” Manannán asked her. “Your song is so evocative, Grace.”

Sister Maggie pursed her lips and gave Matt a judgmental look. He seemed to sense her irritation and sought her out.

“Ah,” Manannán said. “Our children do change us.”

Matt pointed at himself. Sister Maggie narrowed her eyes and said nothing, but Matt was used to her silences.

“Blame Dad,” Matt said. “I didn’t ask to be born.”

“I see why your boy wishes to return to us,” Manannán continued, flagrantly ignoring Matt.

The humans had begun to get uncomfortable from this. Foggy rolled his eyes at them and shook his head.

It was the way with elders. You got used to it. It would be another couple of decades of not getting caught in a fishing net or slaughtered by humans before the older folk started to realize that Foggy and Matt existed, and then it would probably only be with an ‘ugh, _teenagers_ ’ kind of attitude.

Even Sister Maggie was essentially just a really talented teen mom to some of these bigger guys. They only respected her because she’d been picked over and over again by the spirits as a guide to the Otherworld.

“Does he sing?” Manannán asked Sister Maggie.

“He plays,” Sister Maggie said diplomatically. “He’s led once. About two decades years ago.”

Manannán cocked his head.

“So young?” he asked.

Sister Maggie hummed.

“And blind,” she added.

“Very impressive,” Manannán said to Matt. Matt scowled.

“Task,” he demanded.

Manannán petted his head like he was a kitten. Matt twitched in rage.

“It isn’t easy to retrieve a lost selkie pelt,” Manannán said to Sister Maggie.

“We are aware,” Sister Maggie said.

“He must honor the spirits of the island as well as the sea,” Manannán said.

“He honors the sea,” Sister Maggie said. “He will lead again when he has his coat back, we both know this.”

Well, maybe so, but it was news to Matt and Foggy.

“What the fuck?” Matt mouthed Foggy’s way.

Dude. That was what you got for having Sister Maggie as a mom. No one could control that.

Foggy shrugged high enough for him to sense it.

“This is true,” Manannán said. “And I’m sure he will do a great job, yes, selkie-child?”

Matt bared his teeth at him. Manannán laughed and patted his head maybe a touch less gently than he thought he was. Matt went wide-eyed and alarmed from the gesture.

“His Task then must be to the island,” Manannán said. “He must show allegiance and reverence.”

“Tell him this, not me,” Sister Maggie said.

Manannán obliged. He turned and finally, _finally_ addressed Matt.

“I am sorry for the injuries that I caused you out of carelessness, selkie-child,” he said deeply.

Matt immediately became uncomfortable.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “Things happen.”

Manannán’s eyes softened.

“They happen to you quite often, don’t they?” he asked.

Matt’s discomfort began to seek new heights; once he found them, he began an abrupt descent into silence.

He nodded.

“I wish I could take back the offense,” Manannán said sincerely, “But your friends are loyal and have done the job for me. You’ve been in these waters before, have you not? You’ve traveled the island?”

Matt set his jaw and nodded once. Firm. Curt.

Atta boy, Matty. 

Manannán approved.

“You are a brave spirit,” he said. “And I can see that you are dedicated. Your Task will not be to the sea for now; our people shall have your service in time. And so instead I task you with honoring the spirits of the island. You’ve met them before, I believe. They helped you as a wee one. Retrace your steps. Repay them for their kindness.”

Matt blinked and cocked his head.

“Is that all?” he asked.

Manannán smiled.

“Do you want more?” he asked.

Matt threw up hands.

“No, sir,” he said. “That is good—great— _plenty_ , actually.”

Manannán laughed like thunder and caught himself right before he slapped Matt on the shoulder.

“You are but young, selkie-child,” he said. “It is good that you came back to us so soon, elsewise your Task might have been more arduous. Now, go. And Steven—I expect my hound to return to this place before you leave this island.”

Steve saluted rather than answering.

Manannán was puzzled. He repeated the action back. Steve flinched.

“Uh. I mean. Yes, sir,” he said.

Manannán nodded.

“Return to your beacon,” he told Sister Maggie. “Your mate sings for you.”

“He better,” Sister Maggie said.

Manannán stood and watched them all as they slid into the water. He waved with swaying long hair and eyes the color of tidepools.

The water was cold out this far, and this time, Matt threw arms around Foggy’s neck. Sam said that, as Chief Decision-Maker of the Cap team, he’d decided that Steve was now going with Sister Maggie on the way back.

“Come now, Stíofan,” Sister Maggie told Steve’s pitiful stare. “It’ll be fun.”

“Go on, then, Steve,” Sam said. “We’ll meet you back at the lighthouse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and heeeere we go!  
> (I'm so excited!!)


	6. where hazel grows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You got a light?” Foggy asked him.
> 
> He did.

The humans were tired. Tired of swimming for hours on end. Tired of crouching around the holy well.

The heat inside the lighthouse wasn’t helping with that. Smoke puffed out of a chimney that hadn’t seen use for more than twenty years. The smell of burning dust was gone by the time Foggy and the others knocked on the lighthouse’s front door.

Karen answered it.

Karen then screamed and threw herself into Foggy’s arms.

They’d been gone for eight hours somehow. She’d started to get worried. Stomach cramps, swirling thoughts, the whole nine yards. It had only taken about an hour to get the enormous lantern moving again, what with Jack’s lantern experience.

JB was nowhere to be seen.

Karen explained that he’d been coming in and out of the lighthouse. She pulled away from hugging Matt to say that she had gotten the feeling that he wasn’t in much of a talking mood.

“I think he’s hunting,” she said.

Hunting what?

“I don’t know,” Karen said. “But he’ll probably be back soon. He checks in every hour.”

Jack was nowhere to be seen either, but Matt found him anyways. Sister Maggie hung back, wringing out her hair in the lighthouse’s old, dusty kitchen sink.

Foggy didn’t hear Jack’s reaction to the news, but he could imagine it.

Matt didn’t come back down from the lantern platform for a while. When he did come, he settled in on the ground next to Foggy across from the fire and laid his cheek against Foggy’s shoulder.

“Tired?” Foggy asked him.

Matt hummed.

“Happy?” Foggy pressed.

“I can’t remember the path I took,” Matt said.

Hm.

“I’m sure your feet will remember. Bodies do, you know,” Foggy said.

Matt kept his eyes closed.

They could have slept at the lighthouse, but there were no beds. Only emergency supplies. A handful of towels, a bunch of flashlights.

The paint all around the interior was peeling. There were none of the strings of shells that Foggy remembered hanging in swoops from the ceiling. There was no kettle shuddering on the stove or laundry laying half-folded on the couch.

The space felt cavernous and empty without Matt and Jack’s lives tucked into it.

They didn’t stay. Sister Maggie and Jack sent them off back for the village. The tide was low enough to walk over the sandbar now.

It was a long, long journey home, guided by stars, clouds of breath, and red fingers aching with the cold.

Foggy, Matt, and Karen were staying at Nan’s house. It was a ways away from Foggy’s childhood home—a couple of blocks back. The Cap trio were staying further in the hills and were, lucky for them, closer to the last cliff their rag-tag group climbed down from.

They dropped off the Caps and their dog. Sam waved and said to text him in the morning when they were ready to leave.

Karen promised that they would.

And then they carried on.

“What if I don’t remember?” Matt asked Foggy as he came out of the ensuite bathroom at Nan’s old house with a cloud of steam.

Foggy combed hands through his hair. He came over to sit down next to Matt on the bed. Matt didn’t move to make room for him, he wanted Foggy to be as close as possible.

“You’ll remember,” Foggy told him. “I’ll help you.”

“You weren’t with me,” Matt said sadly. “Mum was, then no one was until the end.”

Foggy eased him down onto the mattress and pulled the duvet over them both. It was packed with down feathers. Heavy. Matt curled into his chest with cold fingertips.

“You’re not alone, Matty,” Foggy said.

“I didn’t have the stick with me that time,” Matt said with his face pressed into Foggy’s collarbone.

“You aren’t alone.”

“It’s silly to be nervous, isn’t it?”

No.

No, not at all.

“What if—what if it doesn’t fit? When I get it back, I mean. What if it doesn’t fit? What if I can’t swim? What if I forgot how, Fogs? What if I forgot how to breathe and—”

“Matt.”

Matt fell quiet. Foggy laid his head heavily against his.

“You’re Daredevil, Matt,” Foggy said. “These things don’t scare you.”

Matt breathed hot against his skin.

“I’m not scared,” he said.

“You’re not scared,” Foggy repeated.

“I’m not scared.”

“You’re not alone,” Foggy promised.

“I’m not alone,” Matt said. “I’m not scared. And I’m not alone.”

“You can do this,” Foggy told him.

“I can do this,” Matt agreed.

Foggy flicked his eyes up and over to the chair sat next to the other side of the bed. It was full of a tangle of jackets. Matt’s lute laid across its arms; in its shadow was Foggy’s tambourine.

He closed his eyes.

“Lights out, big guy,” he said. “My bones are tired.”

Foggy woke up to a knock on the door. He sat up and blinked blearily.

“Wha’s’at?” he slurred.

“Coffee,” Karen whined through the door.

Ah.

“Left of the stove,” Foggy said.

A mumbled thanks bounced against the door and Karen’s drunk-zombie shuffle left for the kitchen. Matt sneezed under the duvet.

“Morning sunshine,” Foggy yawned. “Ready to face the day?”

Matt sniffed and made no attempt to emerge from his warm, happy den.

Typical.

Their firm was a collective night owl. The fact that any of the three of them got to the office before 10am on any given day was a goddamned miracle. They made it work, usually, by bribing themselves with coffee and leaving the good stuff at the office for Karen not to fucking touch, ever.

This woman burned coffee like a vengeful barista.

Matt brought the duvet with him into the living room and informed any footsteps that passed him that he wasn’t asleep. Karen sat on him with her mug of joe in hand and waited patiently while Foggy made two more in the other room.

“You’re lumpy,” she told Matt’s duvet-ed ass.

“Tha’s m’ name,” Matt mumbled.

“Lumpy?”

“Mm.”

Foggy entered the room with coffee.

They decided to text the Caps on the second cup. The reply that Foggy got was a keyboard smash and then a smattering of words that promised a semblance of wakefulness.

Sam asked if where he could buy ibuprofen. It took him three times to spell the word.

Foggy told him that there was a chemist in town and that they could pick some up for him before they got breakfast at the café next to it.

“What the fuck is a chemist?” Sam texted back.

“An apothecary,” Karen announced, pointing at the green cross over her head.

“Chemist,” Foggy corrected.

“Apothecary. It’s an apothecary,” Karen insisted. “It’s green.”

“It’s a pharmacy at the most,” Foggy told her. Inside, Sam was making confused faces at the wall of colorful boxes. Steve was marveling the rack of novelty umbrellas by the entrance.

“Drug home,” Karen decided.

“Alright, I’ll give you that,” Foggy told her. Matt snapped awake when his cheek slid off his shoulder. Foggy let him wipe at his face in peace.

They got breakfast at Flora’s. It was a nice café, nothing fancy. Mostly it housed a lot of bread covered in whatever protein or condiment you wanted, but damn was it good bread.

“Can you remember where you started off at least?” Steve asked Matt over a cup of steaming tea. Foggy would have thought he’d have opted for coffee.

“It’s hard,” Matt said. “It’s all kind of a mess. I was only eight years old.”

Steve winced in sympathy.

“All I remember of eight was gettin’ slugged in the face by Phil Goldberg,” he said. “You remember Phil, Buck?”

JB made a sleepy, inquisitive sound.

“With the ears,” Steve clarified.

“Did I bite this guy?” JB asked.

“That’s the one,” Steve said.

Sam grimaced at JB.

“We needa get you shots,” he said.

“Fucker earned it,” JB sniffed.

“Y’all were eight,” Sam said.

“I said what I said,” JB maintained. He stuffed half of a piece of toast in his mouth and stole a sip from Sam’s coffee mug.

Matt wracked his brains over breakfast, trying to remember where his ordeal had started. It hadn’t been Foggy who he’d met first. When he’d arrived on the island, he said, there had been something else.

“Mum wouldn’t let me in the water,” he said. “She kept tellin’ Dad not to let me out of the lighthouse for some reason. I can’t—I can’t remember why, though.”

“Why don’t we ask Sister Margaret, then?” Sam said. “She’d know, right?”

Matt sighed.

The church in town was down by the docks. It was grey and built out of gritty old stone. Foggy remembered it being taller. He always remembered it being taller than it was. Matt and Steve and Sam went inside to see if they could find the Sister. Foggy, Karen, and JB hung back.

“The first time I felt Matt in this place, I was so confused,” Foggy told Karen. “I thought they were trying to kill him.”

Karen snickered.

“Do selkies not have religion?” she asked.

Foggy frowned.

“Define religion,” he said.

“Define religion?” JB said. “What, like, in one fell swoop? You can’t just define religion, bub.”

Foggy pursed his lips at him.

“Like, beliefs,” Karen tried anyways. “Maybe with rituals?”

“Then yes,” Foggy said, still challenging JB. “We have religion. We are religion.”

“We ain’t religion,” JB maintained.

“It’s hard to explain,” Foggy relented to Karen. “We’re kinda stuck in between.”

“No, no. I feel that,” Karen said. She looked up at the stone cross hanging over their heads. Beads of water hung from the gravelly stone.

Sister Maggie stood under the stone cross and said that the first thing that she’d done upon reaching the island was mark Matt with a cloaking spell.

She hadn’t wanted anyone to know he was there so that she could make sure that the waters around the lighthouse were safe. It made a whole lot of sense now why Foggy hadn’t been able to track Matt back then until they’d met on the docks. That had been days after Matt and Jack had moved to the island. Foggy should have been able to sense him right away.

“We couldn’t let you out onto proper soil under the spell took effect. You don’t remember Jack blocking you inside?” Sister Maggie asked Matt with a threatening smile. “You weren’t happy about it. I have it on good word that there were multiple escape attempts.”

“I just remember being tired,” Matt said.

“Yes, well. That was the jet lag,” Sister Maggie said with a shrug. “Certainly worked out in our favor that time. No, we marked you with hazel ash and kept you indoors for the first day. Gave me time to map out the cove.”

Matt frowned hard trying to remember.

“It’s alright, I wouldn’t have expected you to remember,” Sister Maggie said.

“So I’ve got to find hazel,” Matt translated.

“Hazel first,” Sister Maggie agreed. “Then to the bay and then the mountain.”

Matt nodded, seeming to remember better now.

“Hazel, then to the bay, then _forest_ , then mountain,” he said.

Sister Maggie lifted an eyebrow.

“I remember now,” Matt said. “Dad took me to a forest and I got stuck in a tree.”

Sister Maggie hummed the hum of someone about to go back and have a conversation with their significant other.

“Not my forest, then,” she said. “There’s another one lower down on the other side of the village. You know which one I’m talking about, Franklin? You can probably get the hazel and that forest in the same go since we’re already close to the bay. Just go past the convent before going up to the mountain.”

That seemed fair.

“Go on then,” Sister Maggie said. “Although, _you_ three had better start following the violets.”

Steve pointed at himself. Sister Maggie nodded.

“The hounds that walk this island have preferred trails. They mark them with dog violets,” she said. “If Manannán’s hound came to shore on its own, then it probably started off along one of those paths. You’re in luck; we’re here in early spring. The early variety has already started blooming. Follow them and they might lead you to the hound.”

Steve tipped his head to the side.

“Sounds easy enough,” he said.

The corner of Sister Maggie’s mouth flickered.

“If I were you, I’d keep those words inside,” she said. “And if _I_ were you, I’d take some matches.”

“Matches?” Sam repeated.

“Well, yes,” Sister Maggie said. “Spirit hounds prefer to hunt in the dark.”

Steve winced.

“Duly noted,” he said. “Where do we buy matches?”

Matt turned their way with high eyebrows.

They sent the Caps off to go collect Peter and his sentient match. Matt thanked his mother. They left the church on the hunt for hazel.

There was a little messy grove of trees on the other side of the village. Foggy knew it because, as a youth, he and his classmates used to dare each other to go into it and call its boggart’s name.

Her name was Jane. She was English, brought to their village in the 17th century by travelers, or so the legends said.

One time, Foggy had gone into the woods by himself on the hunt for Jane and her ‘rotten, cotton, white gown.’ (Oh, weren’t rhyming games fun.) But he’d found no boggarts. He’d only found bones—old bones. They were tangled in the dirt and roots of a huge snowberry bush. It only made sense, Foggy had figured, that a disintegrating skull feed the shrub that fed the eventual Death’s Head Hawk moths.

He hadn’t seen any floating about in that wet wood at the time, but he had no doubt that they eventually made their way back to visit their mother.

Karen led the way into the wood. Matt held Foggy’s elbow and twisted his head around, listening.

Matt said that he remembered this place. He remembered Jack lifting him up to let him put his hands into a hollowed out stump filled with water. He remembered its mouth being coated with soft moss.

Foggy knew which stumps he was talking about.

There had once been two twin trees in the wood. They’d been huge. Heavy.

They had been horse chestnut trees and when Foggy was just a few weeks out of molting his soft fluffy pup pelt, Dad had bought him to the trees to leave an offering at their bases for good health and protection. Foggy could remember picking up the spiky outer-layers of the nuts and Dad taking them out of his chubby hands before hauling him up into his arms to stop him from trying to stab himself with them.

The trees had cracked badly in a storm that same year. The local council sent some people out to cut them down before any dog walkers got hurt.

That had been right before Mom had come into their lives.

Foggy wondered what Matt had been doing at the time in New York.

Probably trying to climb out a fire-escape window. That sounded like something baby Matt would do.

He told Karen to keep right up ahead.

The twin stumps were still there. Around twenty-five years dead, but still making their presence known.

Over time, they would start to sink, Foggy suspected as he peered into the foot-deep pool of water in the first of them.

They would sink and sink and take their water with them until they sunk into the earth and became holy wells.

Matt scraped fingers around the softened, rotten bark that surrounded the pool. He paused, confused by the little ferns that sprung out from the moss.

“It felt bigger when I was a kid,” he said.

Foggy got that. Everything did.

“Is there a circle near here?” Matt asked him.

There had to be.

“If there is, we should tell Karen about the boggart to keep her the fuck away from it,” Foggy murmured.

Matt smiled and crinkled his nose at him in understanding.

“Hey Kare?” Foggy called into the cluster of trees between the two paths ahead.

“Sup?” Karen asked, swinging her bag around and then her body after it. She was mid-climb, unaware of all the water her chosen victim was about to dump on her head in retaliation.

“Can you do me a favor?” Foggy asked.

“Sure thing, name it,” Karen said.

Karen was now on the hunt for Miss Jane Thorn. Foggy sent her purposefully down the wrong path with instructions to be on the lookout for snowberries. He did not describe what they were for her. She saluted and jetted off like a champ.

“I love her,” Foggy told Matt as they stepped off-trail on the opposite path.

“She’s pretty great,” Matt agreed.

“When we get out, we should tell her not to go looking for boggarts,” Foggy said.

“Ehn. They’re more English than Irish. She should be fine,” Matt said.

Hazel grew in stringy bunches. It was a good wood for building fences and weaving baskets and its nuts, the stories said, had fed the Salmon of Knowledge its wisdom before it had been eaten by Fionn Mac Cumhail in turn.

It was a valuable plant to human and _fae_ alike.

The circle Matt and Foggy found of it was tangled with patches of knotweed. Matt sneezed while he tried to break off some branches from in between the weed.

They didn’t need much.

The green hazel wood would smoke something awful and getting it to catch would be a pain in the ass. It would be easier to build a fire and scorch the hazel enough to get some char on it than it would be to reduce all this wet wood to ash.

Foggy found the remnants of a dry stone wall buried under a tangle of brambles. It took some picking and a few little knicks, but he managed to wriggle out an armful of the flatter, drier pieces hiding in the middle of it.

He brought these back to Matt and his handful of torn, splitting branches.

“This is probably enough, yeah?” Matt asked him.

Yeah, probably.

“You got a light?” Foggy asked him.

He did.

Foggy arranged the stones and he and Matt went to dig under the brambles for some of the more dry sticks and leaves that had had the fortune of getting stuck under it in the fall.

They scorched the hazel. Karen was deep enough into the woods that she probably couldn’t see the smoke. They’d put it out soon anyways. Hopefully no one would come around asking too many questions.

“Come here,” Foggy said to Matt, rubbing his thumb against the hot exterior of one of the partially burned sticks.

Matt came closer and took off his glasses.

“Close your eyes,” Foggy said.

Matt did.

Foggy pressed a blackened thumb against the center of his forehand and then had him lift his chin to get another mark at the top of his throat.

“Be you silent to ears and eyes,” he whispered.

“Be you nought more than whispers,” Matt whispered back.

The chirping of birds and the tapping of water hitting the soaked wood floor seemed to fade off into nothing.

“It’s done,” Foggy said. “Step one, accomplished.”

“How long will it last?” Matt asked.

“Not long,” Foggy told him. “It only hides you within a few miles of the place that you cast it. Come on, let’s go scare the shit out of Karen.”

Karen did not think their joke was funny. She punched Foggy in the arm and gave him all kinds of hell for having lost their only blind team member. Then she beat the shit out of Matt’s arms when he reappeared next to her halfway to back to the bay.

While Matt was being assaulted, Foggy checked his phone and found Sam’s reaction to finding out just who Peter’s fire was waiting for him there in text message form.

Sam had called Johnny’s sister right then and there.

Steve was apparently having an existential crisis, thinking that he could no longer tell which people in New York were mutants and which were _fae_.

And JB, naturally, was bullying the fire.

It sounded like their quest was off to a great start.

They regrouped for lunch down by the harbor. Steve had in his hands a field guide of native plants from the town’s bookshop. Peter and Johnny were too bright and energetic to look at.

Foggy gathered through Peter’s nattering that he and Johnny had been trapped inside for the last day by the abominable Mrs. Doyle.

“She hates me,” Peter told Foggy. “She think’s I’m ‘bothersome.’”

“Me too,” Johnny reported. “She bound me to a stool.”

“And she made me read all day,” Peter added. “She quizzed me on every paragraph.”

This all sounded pretty much exactly like what Foggy expected from the old witch.

“So we’re getting mixed messages here,” Sam reported over those two’s complaining. “The Sister, obviously, is telling us to follow dog violets, but some rando just popped out of the back of the bookstore and told Buck that we ought to be chasing dog-rose? Not violet? But Steve’s book there says that dog rose doesn’t blossom for months yet. So which is it, rose or violet?”

Foggy scoffed.

Matt hummed.

“Violet,” he said. “You’re getting jerked around by a pixie.”

Sam stared at him blankly. Matt didn’t pick up on his confusion.

“A pixie,” Foggy repeated. “His name’s Dalaigh—he chases after the book-keeper, pretending to be a clerk and whatever. Has done ever since the old man slammed the door in his face nearly twelve years ago. Anyways, you can’t trust him for shit. He’s always leading the villagers astray.”

Sam processed that while staring out at the harbor.

“How the hell does anyone get anything done in this place?” he asked miserably.

Foggy shrugged.

“Not a whole lot of visitors,” he said. “We just get used to it.”

Peter and Johnny didn’t want to go follow no stinkin’ violets. They wanted to come with Matt, Foggy, and Karen to the mountain.

“No can do,” Foggy told them. “Dogs like the forest and plains.”

“But we want to _help_ ,” Peter moaned. Johnny looked between him and Cap next to him a couple of times.

Johnny was fascinated with Steve.

Johnny could have been Steve’s own son if you weren’t looking too hard. All blond hair and blue eyes and gangly limbs that would almost certainly thicken and broaden with age.

“I don’t like the mountain,” Johnny told Peter. “It feels weird.”

Peter squinted at him.

“You think Mrs. Doyle’s bathtub feels weird,” he accused.

“That’s ‘cause its blue,” Johnny said. “Who paints their bath blue?”

“It’s tile, Johnny, it’s not painted,” Peter said.

“Alright, fine. Who tiles their bathtub blue—actually, who tiles a bath to begin with?”

Mrs. Doyle. That’s who.

Peter rolled his eyes, then wrapped himself around Matt’s chest and whined until Matt laughed at him. Matt extricated him and pushed him over in JB’s direction.

“You’re obsessed with dogs, Pete,” he said. “You should be lovin’ this.” 

Peter huffed.

“I signed up to help _you_ ,” he said. “Not these guys.”

Steve lifted an eyebrow at him.

“By helping them, you are helping me,” Matt said indulgently. “Just go with it, yeah?”

“You’re talking more like Foggy,” Peter pouted.

It took Foggy a moment to realize that he was referring to Matt’s shifting accent. Matt shrugged.

“It happens,” he said. “Why don’t we do this? We’ve all got to start at the bottom of the mountain. There’s a woodland there where dog violets like to grow. We can all start at the same place and then break off. Is that fair?”

Peter considered it.

“Can I come with you guys?” he asked. “Johnny can go with Cap and Mr. Wilson.”

Johnny went from staring up at Steve in wonder to rapt attention. The horror on this kid’s face.

“You’re leaving me?” he asked.

Aw, baby no. Everything’s okay.

“Peter, you’re leaving?”

JB paused in his plotting to look alarmed at Johnny’s tone.

“No one’s leaving anyone,” Sam said. “Peter, hon. I know you wanna help your friend, but they’ve gotta do what they’ve gotta do. So you’re coming with us, okay?”

Peter sighed and relented. Johnny came in close to him and threaded an unsure arm through his. Peter leaned against him.

“Finish your lunch,” Matt said, reaching over and ruffling Peter’s hair.


	7. where violets follow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We’re goin’ swimming,” Karen sang.
> 
> “We’re not,” Mr. Wilson said like he could make it happen just by believing in it hard enough.

Peter didn’t want to go with Cap and Mr. Wilson and Sergeant Barnes, not because they weren’t doing important stuff, but because he’d come all this way to help Matt.

Matt.

Not these folks.

Johnny said that he understood, but Peter thought that his heart wasn’t fully in it. He wasn’t sure why. Johnny usually didn’t have any problems with him chasing after Matt and Wade, even if he and Wade had a strained at best relationship.

“Do you not like the forest?” Peter whispered to him as they hiked past a long, long cottage with a stone wall like Mrs. Doyle’s around it.

Johnny shook his head like that wasn’t it. He kept his arm tucked through Peter’s like Matt had his in Foggy’s.

He frowned a lot and didn’t look at Peter in the face.

His heart was nervous.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Peter promised. “I won’t let any dogs getcha.”

Johnny’s face tried to smile at that. He nodded.

The forest on the mountain was _huge_. It hadn’t looked big from so far away. It was really wet; water trickled down through the gullies on the sides of the trails and into the deep dikes that surrounded the tree line.

Peter shivered. Johnny pressed in even closer.

Matt breathed out in determination.

“Leprechaun, then the lake,” he told Foggy.

Foggy nodded.

“We’re goin’ swimming,” Karen sang.

“We’re not,” Mr. Wilson said like he could make it happen just by believing in it hard enough.

“Godspeed, y’all,” Cap said.

“Thanks,” Matt said. “If you guys run into trouble give a shout and we’ll find our way down to help out.”

“No need,” Sergeant Barnes said. “But thanks anyways. Best of luck, selkie.”

Matt nodded sharply and turned back towards the trees.

“Here goes nothin’,” he said.

Johnny was good at finding the early dog violets. He kept bringing the flower heads back to Peter and pressing them into his hands before scrambling off to go fetch more.

Mr. Wilson watched him with a weird face.

“Is this normal fire-demon behavior?” he asked.

Peter shrugged.

“He brings me all kinds of stuff,” he said.

Mr. Wilson looked at him now.

“Like what?” he asked.

“Drying racks. Dutch ovens. Sometimes kindling,” Peter said. “Foggy thinks that he’s trying to bring me the offerings that his people like to receive.”

Mr. Wilson grumbled something unkind about Johnny’s teammates. Peter didn’t know how to respond to him because he still hadn’t met Johnny’s teammates.

“I’ve got too many,” he said when Johnny came back with both hands full of violets.

Johnny made him swap violets with him and then ran off into the trees with the old ones. Peter saw him reaching up as high as he could to put them in the forks between branches. Sergeant Barnes saw him doing this and took a few to help him out.

“Peter.”

Peter looked back. Mr. Wilson’s dark eyes were unreadable.

“You were both already whole, you know that, right?” he asked.

Peter left him to go help Johnny with the flowers.

There were a lot of early dog violets. Like a lot, a lot. At least in this part of the woods.

Sergeant Barnes kept sniffing at them, then sneezing violently. Cap told him the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Sergeant Barnes just carried on sneezing.

He tripped over a bunch of twisted-up roots and Cap had to scramble to catch him before he fell into a creek.

Eventually, Johnny squeaked, too.

Peter looked over to him as he squeaked again. Then again.

Cap was closer to him than Peter was. He put a hand on his shoulder. Sergeant Barnes sneezed into his elbow.

“What the fuck is this stuff?” he asked out of nowhere.

Johnny squeaked.

Cap pulled him out of the ivy on the side of the trail and stood awkwardly over him while he coughed and then sneezed again.

“What’s up, JB?” Mr. Wilson asked.

Sergeant Barnes shook his head and blinked watery eyes back at them.

“’S fuckin’ pollen or somethin’,” he said.

Mr. Wilson looked around and breathed, trying to smell something unusual. He looked down at Peter and Peter shrugged. He was just fine. He didn’t feel or smell anything more than the wet, earthy scent that had been in the air since they’d split off from Matt and the others.

“Maybe just this patch?” Cap asked over Johnny’s rapid squeaking fit. Johnny stopped and panted a bit, then shook his head hard.

“Someone’s burning something,” he wheezed.

Cap frowned down at him and then back at Mr. Wilson.

There was a cabin up ahead. Peter was surprised that they hadn’t noticed it before. White smoke was billowing from the space in front of it.

Sergeant Barnes coughed really hard and grabbed Johnny to pull him back farther away from it with him. He pulled his scarf up over his face and wrapped an arm around Johnny to pull his sweater up over his.

Peter could hear voices close by.

They sounded like—

“FUCK no. This is what I’m sayin’, Matt. This is _exactly_ what I’m sayin’.”

Hey.

Hey, that was Foggy.

“We don’t need him. Fuck him, we’ll just head up on our own.”

“Foggy, I _have_ to, okay? This is my—”

“So give him my name.”

“He don’t want your name, Fogs. He wants my name.”

“Well he ain’t gettin’ it, is he? You gave it to me, ya arse. I ain’t sharin’.”

Wow. Foggy was pissed. He was dropping consonants all over the place.

“I’m giving it to him, Foggy,” Matt’s voice said firmly.

“ _Why_?” Foggy demanded. “Why, so he can curse you like he cursed your Da?”

Matt didn’t respond.

“Did you not know?” Foggy asked.

The silence held. Mr. Wilson cringed at Cap and Cap flicked his eyes towards Sergeant Barnes who shook his head.

“I think we should move on,” Mr. Wilson said softly to Peter.

Peter nodded.

This sounded very personal.

“HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?” Foggy roared at apparently something Matt had murmured.

“He knew from the start,” Matt argued back. “And I know now, too.”

“You don’t know,” Foggy said. “You _think_. And anytime you start thinkin’, we all end up in trouble, Matthew. Just—listen to me, would you? You’re my people. My mate. I’ve got a say in—”

“It’s my life and my coat,” Matt snapped back.

“’t won’t be anythin’ left of it if you’re this thick-headed about it,” Foggy said. “Give him my name.”

“He’ll take mine. Manannán needs _my_ sacrifice,” Matt said.

“My sacrifice _is_ your sacrifice, you stupid man.”

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

Moving right along then.

Maybe it was for the best that Peter and Johnny had gotten stuck with the Caps.

“I’m not givin’ him your name, Foggy—”

“Then I’ll give it to him,” Foggy said sharply.

There was a long pause.

“No—”

“Where is this bastard?”

“No. Foggy, no. Don’t—”

“Alright, ya red-hatted dick. We’ve come to a—”

“Foggy, no!”

“The name’s—”

“MATTHEW. My name’s Matthew. We’ve met before, twenty years ago and—”

“Fuck off—ignore him, ya fuck. My name’s Franklin, and you can have it, but if you think I’m trustin’ the likes of you for _one_ _second_ —”

Mr. Wilson pulled on Peter’s arm to encourage him to walk softly down the side of the hill, away from the cabin with him.

Peter went as quietly as he could. He and Mr. Wilson and Cap all met up with Sergeant Barnes and Johnny who both looked a little like they were in pain from the conversation going on between the Daredevil folks and, presumably, a leprechaun.

“Well, you know, at least they discussed it before going all in,” Mr. Wilson said as they all carried on, on a hilly path through the forest. The further into the wood, the more colors seemed to appear all around them. At first, everything Peter saw seemed to be green, but now there were snowdrops. A whole meadow of them, all weeping together.

Early dog violets sprung up in patches between those white mourners. They trekked through them away from the trail.

Peter was careful in picking his way after them. Cap and Mr. Wilson even more so with their big, clumsy feet.

The white and purple gave way to a blanket of green moss and ivy, which was flecked here and there with brilliant yellow flowers. Johnny picked a few and set them in the hollows of rotting stumps as they passed. Sergeant Barnes told him that he needn’t do that, they weren’t there to honor the spirits like the DD folks were. They were just passing through.

Johnny grabbed Peter’s hand, though, and pulled him away from Mr. Wilson to show him layers and layers of mushrooms, some orange, some white, all climbing up trees like mussels on pier legs.

He pulled Peter with him to gaze into tree stumps housing a thousand species of tiny plants.

“Do fires live in the forest?” Mr. Wilson asked Cap on the trail behind them.

“I thought that they were plains-folk,” Cap said. “But I know fuck-all apparently.”

“We’re cave people,” Johnny said suddenly.

He went still with his hand circled around Peter’s wrist.

Mr. Wilson and Cap turned to look at his shoulders.

“Cave people?” Cap repeated.

“We live in darkness and shelters, where wind and water are scarce,” Johnny said like a chant to no one in front of him and Peter. “Some of us are candles. Some of us bonfires. But some of us are bigger and more powerful than that. The underbrush are their offerings. The wind is their shepherd. They grow until there is nothing left to burn and then they sink for years and years, waiting for a new spark. Waiting to do it all over again.”

Johnny’s palm was warm. His eyes half blue and half orange. Flickering.

His heart had gone steady in Peter’s chest.

“What kind of fire are you?” Peter asked him.

Johnny turned to him and his eyes went blue. Clear of embers and sparks.

“Whatever you need me to be,” he said with a smile. “Come on, I hear beetles.”

Peter thought that they’d been going down. They’d been slipping and sliding like hell. The early dog violets rolled through the ivy in front of them with no consideration for human-shaped feet.

Sergeant Barnes said ‘fuck this’ about a quarter of the way in and just went loping through the foliage.

Cap jerked in alarm at that, tripped, and fell right into the stuff.

It was soon after that that Peter realized that they’d been climbing the whole time. The trees broke for a moment before them and the whole forest light up with warmth and yellow-green grass.

Way out ahead of them, Peter could see the cliffs. The bay. The harbor. All of it.

“ _Fae_ -logic?” Mr. Wilson asked Cap.

“Maybe,” Cap said. “Or our falls have been shorter than our climbs.”

Sergeant Barnes came climbing back up to their level from where he’d hopped out through the trees to stare at the cliffs.

“No more violets,” he said.

Peter pulled himself back.

“What now?” he asked.

“What now?” Sergeant Barnes scoffed. “Now we do things by instinct.”

Instinct?

“Come here, fire,” Sergeant Barnes said. “What is your heart telling you? Mine is saying to get higher.”

Johnny didn’t break away from staring over the cliffs.

“The selkies are close again,” he said vacantly.

Sergeant Barnes lifted his chin and surveyed the trees.

“You’re right,” he said.

“They’re frustrated,” Johnny said, frowning. “Maybe they need help?”

Sergeant Barnes looked back the way they’d come, then jerked his face abruptly up the side of the hill.

“I got ‘em,” he said.

The last climb was a major trek.

Jesus.

Peter’s thighs hurt. He didn’t understand. He ran through the city at top speed all the time.

He was blaming it on the mud and unsteady ground.

“Wow.”

He looked up at the sound of Mr. Wilson’s voice and found himself staring at a lake. It was surrounded by trees and covered with water lilies that had no business blooming this early in the year.

The sky up ahead was so blue it was almost earth-shattering. Almost upsetting.

If only the lake had been still. It might have been awe-inspiring.

It was not, though. Definitely not. Not with Foggy barely containing clear fury on the edge of the water. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed a fist to his mouth. He seemed to be shaking.

Matt and Karen were in the water. Matt was holding his face in his hands while Karen sent murderous vibes towards huge round basket floating next to them like a beach ball. It spun in circles lazily, heedless of the others’ frustration.

“You found us,” Foggy said without turning around.

His voice sounded cold.

He was having a _very_ bad day. Peter checked his pockets for something to give him as an offering, but he only had a stick of gum and a couple of coins.

“Y’all need some help?” Mr. Wilson asked cautiously.

“No,” Foggy drawled. “We need fuckin’ Sisyphus because this bullshit is an impossible task.”

“This bullshit” was somehow climbing into the basket and giving an offering to the island.

It was completely round, though, and it was hard to grab onto because its bottom was slick with algae. Not to mention that any time anyone swam close to it, their current sent it spinning away.

Not to mention the reeds. The reeds made swimming nigh impossible. But the lake was too deep to stand in. You had to tread. You had to swim.

Matt asked God how he and Sister Maggie had done this when he was a kid.

“We didn’t even shift,” he moaned. “How did we not shift?”

“I could shift right now and still not be any closer to solving this problem,” Foggy snapped.

“Have you guys tried cornering it?” Cap asked.

“We did,” Karen said, “But then we couldn’t get up into it.”

Right.

“Have you tried pulling it down?” Cap asked.

He got angry glares from all parties able to give them.

“Just asking,” he said.

“My dad did this on his own somehow,” Matt huffed. “But _someone_ can’t remember.”

“ _Someone_ was eight years old,” Foggy said. “And I _told_ you that he just fuckin’ grabbed it and pulled it to shore.”

“There is no shore,” Matt argued.

And there wasn’t. There was just reeds. Tall ones that hugged the edge of the lake. It was like the lake itself was a crater with no beaches to speak of.

“I am aware of that, Matthew,” Foggy said. “But believe it or not, at that time, there was.”

“We should have brought Dad,” Matt sighed.

“Why don’t you just jump into it?” Peter asked.

It seemed reasonable enough to him. Even though there was no leverage to catch onto out over the lake, a running start might be enough to jump into the basket, especially if it was on the edge of the water.

“Oh please, honey, be my guest,” Foggy said.

This shit was impossible.

Like, sorry Matt.

But it wasn’t happening.

Peter had crashed into reeds five times now, even with super-human jumping ability and aim. He was wet. He had marks all over his back and sides from very sturdy plant stems. He had a fat lip from scraping it against the side of the hell-device.

The basket, as far as he could tell, did not want occupants and so the basket was not having them.

“We can have Johnny burn it so it’s half-size?” he offered. “Might be easier to get into then.”

“No,” Matt sighed, “It has to be done this way.”

Did it really, though?

“Maybe it’s a timing thing,” Sergeant Barnes said.

He and Johnny had been chasing the basket around the edge of the lake, kicking and pushing it back towards the middle where everyone else was trying to herd it. He himself had slipped off the edge of the water a good two times before he decided that that it wasn’t worth it anymore.

Foggy stopped rubbing Karen’s sore shoulders abruptly.

“It was night,” he said.

“Come again?” Cap asked.

“It was night when me and Mr. Murdock found her,” Foggy repeated. “It was night—Matt. Do you remember what time you and Sister Maggie got into the basket?”

Matt dead-eyed his shoulder.

“Like, generally,” Foggy said. “Was it warm still? Do you remember? It was October, right?”

“I don’t know, Fogs,” Matt said a little nastily.

“ _Try_.”

“I can’t try. I can’t _see_. I couldn’t see then and I can’t see now and I was soaked through. So yeah. It was cold. The whole night was cold.”

“Give me more to work with here, Murdock.”

It would be a miracle if these two left the island with an intact relationship after this.

“Were there birds?” Foggy asked, apparently sensing Matt’s mounting frustration. “Do you remember hearing birds? Did you set off after school? Or was it—”

“It was a weekend,” Matt said.

“Right,” Foggy said. “Okay, so how long did feel like it took you it get to this point?”

“Ages,” Matt said. “I don’t know how, maybe I was just small. Maybe Mum wasn’t in a hurry.”

“Maybe the hound’s right then,” Foggy said. “Maybe it’s a matter of timing. We got here too soon. We might have to wait until sundown.”

“Sundown?” Karen asked. “That’s hours from now.”

Foggy held out his palms helplessly. Karen blew out a breath from between her teeth.

“What do you think, Red?” she asked. “Wait until sundown?”

Matt put a hand on the basket to stop it bumping up against him in its constant spinning.

“Why not?” he asked. “What do we have to lose?”

The DD troop were going to wait, but the rest of them had work that was less timing-specific.

“Don’t drown,” Sergeant Barnes told the others before they headed off back into the forest.

“No promises,” Matt said.

The forest was colder now, but that was probably because Peter’s clothes were still a little damp. Johnny had generated enough heat to dry the worst of the wetness out of the whole groups’ clothes, but he had to spare his energy for guiding them through the forest at night.

Mr. Wilson and Cap had taken to hypothesizing why someone might steal the sea god’s hunting dog.

Sergeant Barnes said it was probably a witch.

Johnny thought that a human had gotten it confused with a horse.

Peter thought that some animal sanctuary had seen it and gone, ‘well _hello_ there.’

“Maybe—” Cap started.

Sergeant Barnes stopped dead in the middle of the trail. His eyes went metallic immediately.

“Nope,” he said. “Back, back, back. Go. _Now_.”

So they were on a new trail now.

They’d been on it for about ten minutes while Sergeant Barnes crashed through the ivy and trees around them in a wide circle, coming back every so often to check on them.

“Don’t like this,” Cap said like an angry man walking right into his fate with full knowledge that he was going to die a stupid death.

Johnny stopped this time and freaked out. He grabbed Peter’s arm and dragged him back the opposite direction that they had come.

Okay.

So.

The _fae_ were uncomfortable and the dying light seemed to be bringing out territory lines that weren’t there in the daytime.

Sergeant Barnes’s eyes were just about glowing. He didn’t seem cool or chill at all anymore.

He seemed paranoid.

Winter Soldier paranoid.

Johnny, on the other hand, was anxious. Super anxious. Peter had never seen him this subdued. He tried sticking close and hooking their arms together, but every time, Johnny got antsy and unhooked them and pushed Peter towards Cap and Mr. Wilson.

His heart beat faster and slower. Faster and slower. He kept looking all around them.

“Maybe we should call it quits for the night,” Mr. Wilson said after Sergeant Barnes came rattling out of the now-dark trees to check on them again.

Peter wasn’t positive, but he thought that Sergeant Barnes was glowing.

Just a tiny bit. Just around his edges.

Johnny was, too. More so than Sergeant Barnes. He lit the ground and trees around him like he was holding a lantern.

He wasn’t though. He just threw light like that.

Peter had never seen him do that before either.

A scream sounded out from somewhere behind them and Peter didn’t have time to think before Sergeant Barnes was there with his arms thrown out at his sides. Johnny did the same in front of the group.

They both held that shape. The screaming, Peter realized, wasn’t screaming. It was howling.

“Shit,” Sergeant Barnes said.

So now they were trying to find somewhere to duck into—a cave, some low-hanging tree cover, _something_ —before the _c_ _ú sidhe_ ’s last bay.

That was fun.

Not terrifying at all.

The sudden wind and the last peak of red and orange light through the trees felt like a threat. Like an eye on the horizon winking at them.

Peter didn’t know where they were anymore or how far away from their original trail they had come. He knew that they’d passed through the snowdrop meadow, but beyond that, he wasn’t sure.

The second bay didn’t sound like a scream or a howl.

It sounded like thunder.

It started to rain.

He would happily admit that he was scared now.

“Buck,” Cap said seriously. He and Mr. Wilson went dead calm in crisis-mode. That was why they were Avengers. That was why Peter wasn’t one yet.

Sergeant Barnes seemed to be listening.

He turned back their way with eyes that truly did glow now. Peter could see them better than any other part of him. Than any other part of the forest.

Sergeant Barnes took them back to the cabin.

The leprechaun’s home.

He knocked on the door and it opened on creaking hinges to reveal a tall, tall man wearing rings upon rings on every one of his fingers. Their gold and many colored jewels didn’t match the roughness of his red and black flannel shirt or his fraying brown jeans.

“Well, well, well,” he drawled. “I thought I heard new bodies skulking around these parts. Look at the lot of youse. Americans.”

“What do you want?” Sergeant Barnes asked.

The leprechaun grinned like a shark.

“Your name, hound,” he said.

Sergeant Barnes pursed his lips and then huffed a little laugh.

“You do good business in these parts, I bet,” he said.

“I do,” the leprechaun said. “What do you say? A name for shelter for your friends. You’re not in danger here, are you, _c_ _ú_?”

“My name is Séamus,” Sergeant Barnes said.

“Séamus,” the leprechaun said.

Sergeant Barnes took a deep breath that made his shoulders rise all the way up.

The leprechaun’s smile went wicked at the corner.

“Come in,” he said. “Quick now. It’s going to get wet out there.”

The leprechaun’s home was warm. The light inside came from the fire as opposed to any electricity. The leprechaun told them to take off their shoes and to relax for the time being. He would make tea.

Sergeant Barnes and Cap seemed to be having a conversation with their eyes. Johnny tucked up close to Peter. He was cooler than usual from the rain, but his heart was comforted by the fire.

“Séamus?” Mr. Wilson asked across their circle quietly.

Sergeant Barnes shivered.

Cap shook his head at Mr. Wilson.

“You never told me,” Mr. Wilson said.

Cap let Sergeant Barnes press his face into the side of his neck.

“’James’ is anglicized,” Cap finally explained. “It’s the same name that you know him by. We wouldn’t lie to you, Sam.”

“Hm,” Mr. Wilson said. “Stíofan and Séamus. Not gonna lie, Steve and James brighten y’all up a bit.”

“ _Stop_ ,” Sergeant Barnes warned.

“Don’t say it so much,” Cap said quietly. “It’s dangerous.”

“How so?” Mr. Wilson asked.

“Names are more important than you know, human,” the leprechaun interrupted, coming over with mugs full of sweet, floral-smelling tea. “They hold power. They can be brought into spells and invoked in times of need. Acts committed by your name are the same as those that you do yourself.”

Peter looked to Johnny. Johnny met his eye, then looked away.

His name was traced in a bronze sigil on Peter’s arm, right in the space above his bracelet. He’d whispered it to Peter before, but Peter couldn’t understand it.

Fires spoke in a universal tongue, but one that humans could never fully understand. Johnny didn’t have any other names besides this one and the one that he wore among humans.

“You are with Maidiú, no? The selkie Margaret’s boy?” the leprechaun asked.

Cap shifted his shoulders a bit.

“We are,” he said.

“A good boy,” the leprechaun said approvingly. “Just like his mother. The island craves him, you know. If it had its way, this forest would keep him. It has been centuries since there were selkies living on the mountain.”

He paused, then huffed.

“Not so sure about that mate of his, though,” he grumbled. “Damn sea-beasts are always raisin’ hell and throwin’ accusations.”

Peter worked very hard to swallow a laugh. He could only imagine Foggy’s perspective on that.

“He’s better than he seems,” Cap said kindly. “Nelson is our friend, too.”

The leprechaun scoffed.

“That one is only half of this island,” he said.

Peter perked up.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Foggy was born here.”

“Born here, yes,” the leprechaun said. “But him? No. A harp seal. You can see it in his face. Probably a pup abandoned by its mother and collected by some cow from the village who’d lost her own. Aye, he’s got the look in his eye of his people. Don’t trust them Vikings, I’ll tell you this.”

Peter was baffled.

He’d—like—what?

Foggy was adopted?

But he and his mom were like the same person. Exactly the same person. They could only be related.

Maybe—

“Nelson is a little pale now that you mention it,” Cap said. “But we like him just the same, really.”

The leprechaun huffed and sat back in his old wooden chair with his rings glowing more gold than ever from the light of the fire.

But after a moment, he startled up straight and turned his head towards the window. Johnny and Sergeant Barnes followed suit.

The leprechaun got up and the other two followed him to the door. He opened it and went out to stand on the porch. Cap made eye contact with Mr. Wilson and stood up. Peter followed them.

He looked around the porch into the forest, but it was just raining.

Johnny gasped softly and shivered. Sergeant Barnes dropped his head and took a breath that relaxed his shoulders.

And Peter heard it.

He didn’t know how he heard it, but he did.

It was music. The picking of chords. They fell down over each other and picked up faster, then slower. And slowly, as they gained speed, another instrument joined in. It was staccato. Rapping. Tapping and shivering.

A tambourine.

“They got in the basket,” Peter realized.

“It’s a selkie song,” Johnny told him. “The song of the mountain.”

The leprechaun smiled out at the top of the trees.


	8. ancient as bogs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Wilson announced that this whole moor could go fuck itself and Peter could not agree more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> references to depression and suicide in this chapter. Please do what you need to to take care of yourselves!

They waited another five minutes or so before Sergeant Barnes said that it was time to go. Johnny popped up and dug through Peter’s backpack for a clear poncho to wriggle on over his jacket.

“Watch, I’m gonna transform into a lightbulb,” he told Peter brightly.

“Take care, hound,” the leprechaun warned as they all filed out onto the dripping porch. It was still raining, but the sound was gentler now.

“Thank you for your shelter,” Sergeant Barnes said to the leprechaun.

Johnny took a moment to dip his head into a little bow, too. The leprechaun approved. He nodded.

They stepped down from the creaky steps of his porch.

Johnny’s plastic covering caught his lantern-lighting and scattered it into the trees. The rain drops that stuck to it make little dotted patterns on them, like the stippled dots of comic book colors. He didn’t talk. No one talked.

All that there was, was the sloshing and splashing of feet through water and dirt.

Sergeant Barnes said it was best to head back towards the village for now. There was another hound out and about and they didn’t want to offend it by invading its territory. Cap and Mr. Wilson agreed.

The trail through the forest was easier to follow somehow, now that the rain and the baying had subsided. It was still dark, but the lighter rain made the forest seem more otherworldly than overtly threatening.

They passed the snowdrop meadow again. And soon enough, when Peter looked up, he saw little clumps of purple flowers glowing in the forks of the trees. Here and there was a bright yellow blossom, all lighting up the hollows of their trees like candles. Like tealights.

Huh.

Peter watched the side of Johnny’s face.

He’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d been collecting those flowers earlier.

“Johnny,” Peter said quietly.

Johnny looked back at him with a smile.

“Hm?”

“You’re actually really, really smart, aren’t you?” Peter said.

Johnny’s lip threatened to let a couple of teeth escape.

They were nearing the place where they’d entered the forest when they crashed into Foggy and Karen. Literally crashed; those two came slipping and sliding down the side of a hill making a racket.

They did not slam into Cap by virtue of Foggy grabbing onto both Karen’s backpack and a gnarled tree trunk at the last possible second. He groaned. Karen beamed.

“We made it!” she declared.

They were soaked. Both of them. Foggy’s hair looked silver in the dark forest. A number of dark, tasteful leaves were stuck in it.

Karen, on the other hand, had a twisted crown made of lake reads on top of her head. Evidently, she’d had a great time up there by the lake after the rest of them had left.

But wait.

“Where’s DD?” Mr. Wilson asked both of them.

Both Karen and Foggy looked up like they’d just realized that their keys were on the inside of their car.

“Headed east,” Foggy said.

Mr. Wilson said nothing. Peter peered at him, then followed his eyes to the hand Foggy had wrapped around Karen’s backpack.

Matt’s cane with its red tip hung off his wrist.

Mr. Wilson looked up slowly.

“Which way’s east?” he asked.

Mr. Wilson was _pissed_.

Really, truly angry.

Peter hadn’t ever seen him angry like this. He’d seen the guy fight aliens. Fight HYDRA. Fight the US government and the FBI and SHIELD on multiple occasions.

But never had he seen Mr. Wilson go cold.

He told Foggy and Karen that it was not only irresponsible of them to let Matt go off by himself without his cane, but it was flat out ableist, dangerous, and _fucking_ unfair. Cap and Sergeant Barnes flanked him while he said this, standing like uncomfortable stone statues.

Johnny slipped a hand around Peter’s elbow and moved slightly in front of him.

“You think I don’t know that, Sam?” Foggy said lowly, still stood in the ivy on the hill by the trail.

“No,” Mr. Wilson said, “Which is why it’s twice as fucked up. Which way is east?”

“This is our business,” Foggy said. “You guys have your own. Leave it.”

“Leave a blind man to wander around for hours through the forest?” Mr. Wilson said skeptically.

“He’s not blind like you think he is,” Foggy said.

“I don’t care how blind he is or isn’t,” Mr. Wilson said. “I don’t care if he runs around playing hero back in the city. This whole time, you’ve been guiding him and he’s been using that thing, so you can’t look me in the eye right now and tell me that he’s totally fine out there on his own. _We’re_ stumblin’, Nelson. And we’re all sighted.”

Foggy’s lips thinned and his eyes began to darken as though their pupils wanted to swallow their irises.

“This is his Task, Sam,” Foggy said seriously. “When we were children, he walked the plains without the cane. I’m not saying it was easy for him. But he must do it again. He knows the risks he takes. I can’t go with him here. I have to walk the other side of his story for him. We will meet again at the cave where the memory man lives.”

Mr. Wilson didn’t stand down. He lifted his chin. Water dripped onto leaves and off of branches all around them.

“What is your side of these things, Nelson?” Sergeant Barnes asked.

Foggy’s eyes, totally black now and glossy even in the dark, flicked over to him.

“Matt’s father went after him when we were children,” he said. “I went with him. He’s waiting for me to hand off the baton, so to speak.”

Mr. Wilson frowned.

“Jack’s going to go after him?” he repeated. “Doesn’t that kind of undo the whole ‘it’s Red’s task’ thing?”

Foggy’s pupils started to recede from the edges of his irises. He actually quirked a smile.

“It’s Jack’s job to get there too late,” he said. “But in case something goes wrong, he’ll get there just in time. The Sister’s too protective to allow anything less.”

It was a short hike from the edge of the forest to the long cottage with its stone walls. Foggy stopped right outside of it and slung the black bag on his shoulder off of it. He unzipped it and pulled out a guitar of sorts.

It was rounder than a normal guitar. An oval shape with a hole in its center. There was a ring of endless Celtic knots burned into the wood around that hollow.

Foggy handled it like it was super delicate.

“What’s that?” Peter whispered to Karen.

She smiled.

“You know how Foggy has a tambourine?” she asked him.

Yes, he knew.

“It’s Red’s flute?” Johnny asked.

“Or even his lute,” Karen said with a huge white grin. She was proud of her joke. Foggy ignored her and picked a few chords on the lute.

They sounded unearthly. The notes seemed to vibrate the air.

Peter shivered.

Foggy waited.

A sound like a horn answered them after a while. Hollow and aching. It lifted the same few notes Foggy had played and then fell away.

“It’s been done,” Foggy said. “Now, come on. We’ve got a few hours to wait and you all have a dog to find.”

Mr. Nelson’s family was somehow awake even though it was coming onto 11pm. They welcomed everyone back into the house. Foggy’s mom wrung her hands over Matt. She kept saying ‘I don’t like it’ over and over.

“Mom, you’re fussing,” Candace pointed out as Mrs. Nelson paced the kitchen with blankets in her hands. She was convinced that Peter and Johnny were in danger of freezing from the rain and so kept layering the two of them with fabric. The blankets smelled like woodsmoke.

“Franklin, did you—” Mrs. Nelson started.

“ _Yes_ , Mom. I told Grace,” Foggy said for the sixth time. “And she will tell Jack and I guarantee you that the second she lets him off lead, he’ll be off for the cliffs before you can say ‘go.’”

“They need to wait two hours,” Mrs. Nelson reminded Foggy, as though he’d already forgotten this from the last time she’s said it five minutes ago.

Foggy vibrated in irritation.

Mr. Wilson and Cap and Sergeant Barnes were out on the porch, talking about dog violets. The trail of them in the mountain had cut off abruptly, so the sea god’s hound wasn’t to be found up there. Sergeant Barnes thought that maybe he needed to go ask another hound—one like one who’d been baying—if they’d seen any of their brethren. Cap didn’t want him to do that. Mr. Wilson thought that it might expedite things.

Mrs. Nelson passed by the table while Peter was eavesdropping on that business and put a hand on his cheek. She announced that he was nearly frozen. She left to go get a special kind of tea to fix that.

“Foggy,” Karen said in her wake. “Can you sing again?”

Foggy looked up, then sighed and shook his head at the kitchen table.

“Not yet,” he said.

Karen made a sad face.

“After the caves,” he told her.

The Caps decided that they were going. They were going to try to find the other hound. Peter and Johnny got up to join them and were almost immediately suffocated by Mrs. Nelson who was of the opinion that the hound would eat Mr. Wilson and Peter.

She was much stronger than she looked. Peter had to look pleadingly at Foggy to get him to remove her. But even then, she was not happy.

She told them to wait right there and bustled off. Foggy groaned and went after her, apparently to calm as much of the fussing as possible.

Mrs. Nelson came back with Foggy on her heels, telling her that she was overreacting and everyone was going to be just _fine_.

But Mrs. Nelson just ignored him.

“Come here, love,” she said, waving Peter in closer. “You too, Samuel. Come here.”

She had in her hand a little blue pot. She opened it to reveal silver ink inside. She told Foggy to hush and go get her a nib.

“Are you serious?” Foggy asked, but he was already turning around to go find one.

Mrs. Nelson drew a sigil on Peter’s wrist, right above Johnny’s bronze one. It was a crescent with two perfect circles hanging in its empty embrace. A single line came down from the center of the inner circle. She drew the same sigil onto Mr. Wilson’s arm with no trouble, and then badgered Cap until he finally rolled up his sleeve.

“Twice-protected,” she told them. “You might belong to this dog and fire, but for helping one of ours, you deserve our protection as well.”

“They’re going to be fine, Ma,” Foggy said.

Mrs. Nelson was going for gold in the ‘Ignoring your apparently-adopted kid’ marathon.

“Be careful now,” she said to everyone else. “And if you catch Jack and Grace while you’re out there, send them our best—oh. And tell Jack that he doesn’t _need_ to talk to the Memory Man. Even if it’s polite.”

O…kay?

“Bye now,” Mrs. Nelson said cheerfully. “Best of luck!”

They went down into town because Sergeant Barnes said that he needed something before they set off. Peter thought it would be like, a map or a compass or a cursed mirror or something.

But no.

Sergeant Barnes wanted to buy and then chug two energy drinks, one right after the other, while wrapping his hair up in a bun.

Mr. Wilson grimaced as he watched him.

Cap didn’t look even a lick surprised.

“You’re gonna puke,” he said flatly.

“False,” Sergeant Barnes said. “Gonna be ready. You want some?”

Cap did not. Sergeant Barnes offered the dregs of his second can to Peter and Johnny. Peter winced.

“No thanks, man. That’s all yours,” he said.

“Suit yourselves.”

Now that Sergeant Barnes was rattling towards a higher plane of existence, they were ready to go. And boy did they go.

One second they had a dog-man, the next second they did not.

They had a freshly swearing Cap, though.

“Oh, he’s pretty good for being stuck as a human,” Johnny announced a while later.

Peter stared at him, panting.

The village seemed hella small once you’d torn through it in less than ten minutes. The boggy land that lay beyond it, Peter could now say with confidence, was not romantic. It was awful. He was up to his knees in water and mud. It was worse than the forest. Cap had splashed and scrambled through it all like it was no big deal, but then again, as a guy who’d spent half of the second world war trudging through mountains and forests in Europe, he was kind of in his element here. He wasn’t too, too far ahead. Peter could still hear him shouting after Sergeant Barnes.

“Is he slower than he should be?” Peter asked Johnny about Sergeant Barnes. Johnny grabbed his wrist and gave him a pull forward onto slightly drier land. Once he was up there, Peter reached back and did the same for Mr. Wilson.

“As hounds, the _c_ _ú sidhe_ travel as shadows,” Johnny said. “They become part of the darkness itself. It’s how they can cover miles of land at a time.”

Huh.

“So could he catch another hound running like this?” Peter asked.

Johnny lifted an eyebrow. He lit the moorland around them in orange light. It made the muddy water below them glint a little.

“Catch _them_? No. Catch their _attention_ , yes,” Johnny said.

They fell in another bog.

Then another.

Then another.

Finally, Mr. Wilson announced that this whole moor could go fuck itself and Peter could not agree more.

They fell again after that though, because it turns out that you receive the same kind of energy that you put out into the world.

Aigh.

“Not much further,” Johnny promised. “I feel a big presence up ahead. It’s coming fast this way.”

Peter squinted out over the hills and saw nothing but different shades of dark and vague. Nothing seemed to be moving at all.

“Almost there,” Johnny promised again.

It was another half a mile of slogging through colder and colder water before Peter saw the hound. As soon as he could see it, he gasped. Mr. Wilson grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to him.

It was massive up ahead. Truly enormous. It stood still, towering like a small cliff over a clump of trees and shrubs stretching their branches up towards the grey, starless sky.

The thing’s massive head was twisted down towards the ground as though it was listening.

Peter could just make out the shape of Sergeant Barnes reaching a hand up to it at its feet. Its huge tail swung back and forth and sent torrents of wind through the heather. The fields rippled in either direction with each movement.

“JB’s one of _those_?” Mr. Wilson breathed.

“A young one,” Johnny said. “That one’s at least six hundred years old.”

Peter could only gape.

“Is it—is it an elder?” he asked, shivering.

Johnny looked back at him.

“Depends on who you ask,” he said. “Darkness and light have been around for longer than we can even conceive of. It seems friendly, though. Shall we catch up?”

Peter deferred to Mr. Wilson. He himself wasn’t so sure that he wanted to get too close to that thing. It just seemed…heavy.

“Not a whole hell of a lot of other options,” Mr. Wilson said. “Might as well.”

They reached Cap first. He stood a good two yards away from Sergeant Barnes, watching stiffly. Mr. Wilson touched his shoulder and he jumped as though he hadn’t heard them approach. He caught Mr. Wilson’s hand and squeezed it.

“Having second thoughts, Rogers?” Mr. Wilson asked him.

“Didn’t realize how big they got,” Cap whispered back.

Sergeant Barnes didn’t acknowledge any of them. He had both of his hands on the giant _c_ _ú sidhe_ ’s muzzle. It’s eyes—two perfectly hollowed spheres of white and gold—stared deep into his face. They seemed to be speaking without voices. The giant _c_ _ú sidhe_ blinked slowly, then pushed its muzzle deeper into Sergeant Barnes’s arms.

It whimpered. The sound was hair-raising. Like wind slamming against buildings, forcing itself through their cracks.

Sergeant Barnes lifted his head and made a softer, more dog-like whimper back.

Wind suddenly exploded around them in a rush that sent Peter throwing his arms up over his head instinctively. His jacket rattled all around him. He got the feeling that even if he shouted, the noise would only be swallowed up by the air currents.

Sergeant Barnes kept his head up. He didn’t react to his bun breaking out of its band. He held the creature’s eye until the wind around them died down.

“Thank you,” he finally said.

The words sounded like a hiss.

The hound’s eyes closed. The air exploded again and the whole moor flew back as though hit by a shockwave.

They were alone again.

No hound. No shadows.

The sky wasn’t gray anymore.

It was a blanket of blue-black with pinpoints of diamonds scattered in its folds.

“Further east,” Sergeant Barnes said without turning around. “There’s a farm there. The hunting hound is being held by a farmer. He is trying to leverage it against the gods of the sea for his daughter’s life.”

Oh, _no_.

“What’s happened to her?” Cap asked.

Sergeant Barnes finally turned around. He seemed fine. Normal.

“She fell in love with the sea,” he said. “And has since become heartsick. She longs for it. Or so the _c_ _ú_ says.”

“What does that mean?” Mr. Wilson asked.

Sergeant Barnes sighed sadly.

“It means that she’s suicidal. She wants to drown,” he said. “We might actually need a selkie for this one.”

Selkies, Peter learned, guided people who died at sea to their afterlives. They were shepherds, just like the _c_ _ú sidhe_ were. Not completely, unlike the hounds that wasn’t their only job, but still.

When someone fell from the cliffs, or worse, threw themselves, it was a selkie who collected them before any less benevolent spirit did.

Foggy did this.

Before he’d come out to New York, Foggy had done this.

This was what Matt wanted to do.

It was breath-taking and not in a good way.

“What will the selkie do?” Mr. Wilson asked. “If she’s at this point, she needs a counselor and a hospital.”

Sergeant Barnes shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The hound just tried to take her, but she refused to go. She only wants someone from the sea.”

“We’re not helping this girl kill herself,” Cap said firmly.

“I don’t know what else to do,” Sergeant Barnes said. “We’ll—maybe the Sister will know.”

“I’m not bringing a selkie here to help this gal end it,” Mr. Wilson said.

“I don’t know what else to do, Sam,” Sergeant Barnes repeated in frustration. “She wants to die. I don’t know if selkies honor those requests or dissuade people, but I do know that her father is desperate. He won’t give up the hound. If we steal it from him, then he’ll have nothing and he’ll have to watch his daughter suffer. Right now it gives him hope.”

This was…horrible.

Absolutely horrible.

Peter hadn’t signed up for this.

“Alright, no. Let’s think,” Cap said. “We can head that way generally for now to see what we’re working with.”

They followed Sergeant Barnes to the east. No one talked.

There was a small cottage set all on its lonesome on a cliff at the edge of the moor. This cliff dipped down into another village, a neighboring one with rolling hills of pasture.

There was a wooden fence hammered into the ground around the back of the house. It looked like a stable. There was a barbed wire fence all around the edges of the property. But the grass inside the space was empty; there wasn’t a cow or sheep in sight, although there were raised garden boxes on one said of it and a little hutch for chickens against the house.

It was the stable that caught Peter’s attention.

He couldn’t look away from it.

“What do we think, gang?” Mr. Wilson asked beside him. “Plan of attack?”

“Assess the situation,” Cap said immediately. “Check in on the father. Appraise the daughter. Determine plans from there.”

Peter barely heard him.

There was a sound coming from the stable. Johnny was watching it, too.

Johnny turned and met Peter’s eye.

“It’s scared of being in the dark,” he murmured.

“Can you help?” Peter asked him while the older folks talked about things like village resources and helplines.

“Come on,” Johnny said.

They hopped the fence while the Caps debated. It wasn’t high. Both of them could easily pop it. They landed on mud on the other side and Mr. Wilson absently told them not to wander off. He did a double-take, unfortunately, when they promised they wouldn’t and the whole stealth plan was lost to a shedload of abrupt and unnecessary scolding through the fence.

“We’re just going to go soothe the hound,” Peter promised with his hands held out in front of him. “We’ll gain its trust. That’s all. And when we _do_ come back for it, it’ll remember us and won’t run away, okay?”

The Olds were skeptical.

Peter nudged Johnny and they put on their saddest faces.

Mr. Wilson swore and said whatever. Just keep it down and don’t get caught. They had bigger problems.

That was permission.

Johnny beamed at Peter.

The stables smelled like manure and hay and some kind of dry must. Its inside walkway was shaped like a ‘L’ with one pen for a cow and one pen for a horse along one side of the wall and a big pen divided into two uneven ones on the other side. The larger pen of these two was filled with a tubby pig and her babies. The other had a heavier looking makeshift-wall that came up to the roof from the end of the pigs’ pen. It turned the smaller pen into a tall closet. There was a black fabric tarp-like material stapled over the thing’s front so that the whole front of the pen was obscured.

The hound was in there.

Whining.

Johnny followed Peter to the face of this pen and sucked in a quick breath of air. He started radiating heat hotter and hotter. Shadows started to appear on the walls, dancing as though Johnny was firelight flickering. A few baby pigs woke up and came to rest their snouts against the bottom rung of their pen to watch Peter and Johnny poke at the black material. They seemed puzzled by Johnny’s presence.

The hound seemed to feel similarly.

Peter heard it scuffle up from presumably a laying position.

“Hello?” he asked softly. “Puppy? You in there?”

The tall wooden wall shook a little as the hound started to move around.

“Hi,” Peter murmured, edging closer to the covered pen door. “Hi, hi. We’re friends, puppy. We’ve come to rescue you. Can I see you?”

He got ahold of one of the bottom corners of the tarp and carefully pulled at it, popping out stables as he went.

The hound started making new sounds.

“Is it mad?” Peter asked Johnny.

“No, I think it’s just excited,” Johnny said.

Peter held his breath and ripped back the rest of the tarp.

The hound was tall enough to see over the pen’s gate. It was nearly as tall as Peter himself.

It looked nothing like the _c_ _ú sidhe_. It was gray and shaggy all over. It stared at Peter with dark, almost black eyes partially hidden by curly eyebrows.

It even had a mustache.

Awww.

“Hi there big puppy,” Peter said. “Look at you! Super handsome. What’s happened to you? Are you stuck? Here, can we be friends?”

He held out a hand for the hound to sniff. It was weird to hold it directly out in front of him instead of down, but you know what? It was also kind of cool.

The hound licked his hand with a hot tongue. Its tail started to wag hopefully.

“Aw, yeah. There you go, we’re friends,” Peter said, stepping in closer. “Do you want a hug, big dog?”

The hound’s tail said yes. Peter climbed up onto the gate between them and wrapped arms around its neck like it was a person. It sniffed at the inside of his ear and he ducked away from the cold nose.

He pulled back and cocked his head.

The hound did a little dance with its front paws as he did, but Peter was confused.

The thing was massive. It could have jumped this little pen like it was nothing. Absolutely nothing. He looked around.

“It’s the iron,” Johnny said.

Peter looked up.

There was a horseshoe hammered into one of the beams directly above the stable pen. He frowned.

“We’d have to get it off before it can leave,” Johnny said.

“We can’t take it now,” Peter told him. “The Caps have to work out what to do with the girl.”

Johnny pursed his lips.

“Why?” he asked.

Why?

“I mean—yeah. Why? This isn’t their hound,” Johnny said. “They’ve stolen it. It rightfully belongs to the sea. It’s not Manannán’s fault that this girl has depression. This is his dog. It wants to go home. We can’t leave it here.”

Peter got that, really, he did, but sometimes things had to be complicated.

“If the dog disappears, then the dad might get desperate and might do something even stupider,” Peter pointed out.

“No,” Johnny said. “If the dog disappears than the dad will be forced to seek help from humans. This girl needs help from humans. Not _fae_. The _fae_ will ease her suffering by just taking her.”

“And doing what to her?” Peter asked. “Killing her?”

Johnny went quiet.

Peter sighed. The hound pawed at the wooden gate. He turned to it and lavished it with pets with both hands.

“I’m sorry, Puppy,” he told it. “We’re just—we want to help you get home, but we’ve gotta think a little bit first, okay?”

“There are legends,” Johnny interrupted.

Peter paused and looked at him.

“Legends?” he asked.

“Yeah. Of an Owl Witch on the island,” Johnny whispered, checking the rafters of the barn. Once satisfied that this Owl Witch wasn’t listening somehow, he turned back to Peter. “This girl. She’s probably got a lot of emotions, right?”

“Right,” Peter said.

“They say the Owl Witch can take them—people’s emotions,” Johnny said. “They say that she bottles them up for her own spells. That she keeps them. That if you give her too many of your emotions, then you’ll turn to stone—but maybe something has happened to this girl. Maybe she’s carrying something that’s too much for her to handle right now. Maybe, if the Witch comes to her, she can help her bottle the yearning until she’s in a better place to deal with it.”

Peter frowned.

“How do you know she’s a nice witch, though?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s definitely not,” Johnny said. “But I happen to know a witch who is.”

Peter stared, waiting.

Then he got it.

“Oh, hell no,” he said.


	9. find the heart of things in a basket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What is your name, selkie-child?” the Hunter asked.  
> Please don’t kill me, I don’t even have a pelt, all I have is a _horrendous_ attitude, Matt wanted to say desperately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ENTER Wade.

Twenty-one years ago, Matt had laid in this very basket, with a cheek tucked against the Sister’s collarbone, thinking for once that maybe things were going to work out.

Twenty-one years ago, they hadn’t.

But today, by god, they were going to.

He just had to get out of this basket.

He fell into water, which was cool. Kind of liberating actually, since there was no one around him to panic about the whole thing like they usually did.

Foggy said that the lake was round, which meant that Matt could just pick a direction and swim. So he did. It was raining lightly and the sound of the drops chattering off the grass on the side of the lake was helpful. It sounded strange though. Like it sloped up? Like there were layers?

Matt expected a sloshing sound; the noise of the lake water rolling around against the eroded wall of dirt that ran all the way around it. He was prepared to reached up onto the grass and push down with his arms to pull himself out of the water.

It didn’t come.

His hands sunk into sand.

Clay and sand with twisted reeds all in it.

His knees sunk in and he found that he could kneel. But that was strange.

The lake hadn’t sloped down from the sides before. Matt had fallen in from around every inch of it by this point. He would have known if there had been a beach of sorts. He lifted his head and listened.

The rain chattered. Frogs croaked.

Twenty-one years ago, he’d been more or less carried out of the forest, so he hadn’t had to contend with the hellish shit show that was hiking through it without a stick. It sucked. God it sucked.

He almost laughed when he shoved up from a bad fall and realized that the knee of his pants had torn.

Man.

Just like old times.

Aha.

Fuck this, though. No.

Way back when, Baby Matt hadn’t had the sense to stop what he was doing and breathe and think rationally.

Matt, however, had like 20% more sense these days. What he needed here was a walking stick. He just had to make sure he didn’t get bitten by any feisty insects who didn’t want their refuge from the rain to be taken from them.

To find a walking stick to begin with, however, he needed to step off the path. To be completely honest, he wasn’t positive that he was on a path at all, but he did know that to the left and right of him, the rain fell on lots of wide leaves. They sounded like drums. Tiny snares all rattling their rhythms away.

He turned left and thought that the snares sounded different there; less excited. Perhaps there was a tree? Something shielding them from the worst of the drops?

He took a step towards it and his foot caught onto the ropey stems of a low, knee-height plant.

Ah.

Good. Ivy probably grew alongside the trail.

He took another few steps. Fat water dropped down onto his cheek and he knew for sure that he was under a big tree now.

He felt for the trunk.

“Well, now. Would you look at this.”

He almost leapt out of his skin and then dropped into a crouch without thinking about it. He spun around and got his back to the tree; got low.

There was a shape in front of him. Huge.

Huge, huge, _huge_. It made the leaves overhead shiver with its movements. The fat drops from the higher branches cracked against the shape’s broad shoulders. Matt didn’t know where its face was, only that it was hot—pulsing heat above and around its chest. Making the air around it humid.

He could smell the water evaporating. He could hear…something. He didn’t know what it was, it sounded like scraping, creaking, stretching.

“What are you doing in my forest, selkie-child?” the thing’s deep voice demanded.

Smugly, almost.

As though he already knew what Matt was there for.

As though this was some kind of script and he was waiting for Matt to flub his lines.

“I’m trying to find my way out,” Matt said.

The thing—a giant. It had to be a giant—laughed.

“Well, follow your feet then, you’re headed the right way,” it said.

…right.

“I’ve hurt my leg,” Matt lied. “I need a walking stick.”

“A walking stick?” the giant said.

It took a step forward and that strange creaking exploded around its feet. It felt warmer than ever. Like sunlight through trees in spring.

Matt took a step back.

“Well, now, those legs seem fine to me,” the giant rumbled.

Matt’s back scraped the trunk of the tree.

“Are you frightened, selkie-child?” the giant asked after a long beat.

Matt’s heart pounded in his chest.

“No, sir,” he said.

This giant’s heart was enormous and it throbbed like a slow bass. One. Two. One. Two.

“Are you lost?” it asked.

Matt forced himself to breathe and stay calm.

“I think I might be, sir,” he said.

The giant pulled back and that creaking and skittering sound went with him.

“You’ve been wounded,” he said.

Matt pressed his lips together.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The giant’s heart stopped for a long time between beats. He was surprised.

“They call me Fionn,” the giant said. “Fionn mac—”

“Cumhail,” Matt whispered in realization.

The giant’s heat seemed to spread upwards into his face. Pleased.

Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Lord.

Matt didn’t know what to do. He was frozen in place. He didn’t—should he make himself small? Should he keep his chin up? Where was the thing’s face? He—oh, _God_.

That was _Fionn mac Cumhail_.

The hunter himself.

 _The_ hunter.

The Sister had never taught him how to address a hero like this.

He decided to cut his losses and slowly edged down onto his knees. He pressed his lips together and, against every instinct in him, bowed his head to expose the back of his neck.

“Hon--honor to you, Hunter,” he said, more shakily than he’d hoped.

The Hunter’s form straightened and the creaking and rustling around him flickered again before dying off.

What was that?

“What is your name, selkie-child?” the Hunter asked.

Please don’t kill me, I don’t even have a pelt, all I have is a _horrendous_ attitude, Matt wanted to say desperately.

“Maidiú, son of Margaret,” Matt said.

The Hunter considered him.

“And who injured you, Maidiú?” he asked.

“Mannanán, god of the sea,” Matt admitted, but hurriedly qualified “It was an accident, though, he didn’t mean to—”

The giant shifted. Matt could feel his anger blossom out around his giant heart in waves of heat. It was as though he was kneeling in a wet meadow in summer with the sun beating down upon him.

“How old are you, selkie?” the Hunter rumbled.

…uh…like…fifty?

The Hunter waited.

Right.

“Thirty-three?” Matt tried.

The Hunter said nothing. Still waiting.

“I’m 29,” Matt admitted.

The Hunter sniffed and his heat seemed to recede back towards him.

“Useless man,” he huffed. “Absolutely _useless_. Beating children now, is he? Disgraceful.”

Matt decided that clarifying that stabbing was a more accurate descriptor for what had happened would be unhelpful for his cause.

He elected to look very pitiful instead.

“I just—I’ve lost my coat,” he told the forest floor. “I’m trying to get it back. So I need to get out of the forest.”

“Lost your coat?” the Hunter said, baffled. “Lost your coat? Well, where’d you have it last, boy? Did you look there?”

Eh.

Uh.

Well.

Slight problem.

“I tried,” Matt said. “But didn’t have any success. So I spoke to Manannán and he’s given me a Task so—”

“A _task_? For _you_?” The Hunter said, flabbergasted. “Why, you’re just a pup. Where is your mother? Did she speak to the useless bastard?”

UM.

“Yes?” Matt said.

A pause.

“Oh. Well, I see then,” the Hunter said.

Right. Cool. So Matt was just gonna go now. He’d deal with the whole stick issue once he’d fallen out of this forest. Or rolled. Or climbed. Whatever it took to get the fuck away from this situation right here.

“May I have leave, Hunter?” he tried.

The giant shifted around and seemed to get even taller.

“Of course not, son,” he rumbled. “Unlike _some_ men, I’m not satisfied to leave a pup floundering around my forest on his own.”

Wow. Ageist much.

Matt was just fine, thanks. He’d done this before.

“Come, child. Give me your hand. I’ll take you home.”

Oh, hell no. Nice try, old guy. But Matt had learned his lesson about trusting hunting-types, sea gods, and the whole lot of them, honestly.

“I’ll be alright on my own,” Matt said, getting up to his feet. “Thank you for your kindness and passage. I’ll just uh, be on my way.”

He spun around hurriedly and crashed right into the tree.

“You are blind,” the Hunter deadpanned once Matt had dragged himself up out of the ivy, only to eat shit again.

“I’m perfectly sighted,” Matt snapped back at him, before going frozen in horror.

You do not shout at a forest guardian, Matthew. That is asking for an ass-beating and there are only so many hours left in the night.

“You are blind,” the Hunter repeated.

He didn’t sound violent. Matt relaxed his shoulders a bit and lifted his chin.

“I’m _slightly_ blind,” he argued.

The Hunter’s silence was judgmental.

“Are you sure you’re Margaret’s son?” he asked.

WOW.

You know what?

Fuck this forest.

Matt was burning it down as soon as he got out of it.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he sniffed. He found the trail this time. Because he was capable. Perfectly capable. He just needed to go slow, that was all. One foot carefully in front of the—oh _shit_.

He didn’t fall. The fabric of his jacket stretched taut around his arms.

The rage of indignity took over before Matt could stop it.

“Let GO of me,” Matt snarled, struggling to get out of the jacket.

“You smell like her,” the Hunter observed over his head, “But this? I’m not sure what to make of this.”

“Let _go_ , you asshole,” Matt threatened.

Man, what he could really use right now was a billy club. Or about three more feet of height to nail this fucker in the face.

“Perhaps it is the human in you? Are you human, selkie-child?”

“Are _you_ a troll now?” Matt snapped. “Do I gotta answer your riddles three? No, I didn’t think so. Lay off.”

The Hunter was making a highly upsetting noise. It sounded like a chuckle. Matt hated it. And him. And this whole forest.

“Maidiú, eh? You really are something,” the Hunter said. “Settle down, son. There you go. Breathe easy.”

Matt didn’t want to.

The Hunter wasn’t his dad.

Only Dad could tell him what to do.

“I’ve heard whispers of Margaret’s child returning to this land,” the Hunter said. “But I must say, I didn’t expect you to be so…”

So _what_?

The Hunter was smiling. He was definitely smiling.

“You make life so difficult for yourself, son,” the Hunter said, “This forest wants you badly, and it does love a challenge. The more you struggle, the harder it will be for you to leave. So truly, you must settle your anger.”

UGH.

“I’m on a tight timeline,” Matt said.

“I can see that,” the Hunter said.

“Great. I’m glad, since I can’t. Now, since we’re on the same page, let go and I’ll be on my way,” Matt said.

The Hunter laughed and the sound sent Matt’s heart into a flurry. The trees around them threw down their water and their residents went dashing for safety.

“I’ll do you one better,” the Hunter said. “Why don’t you tell me where you need to go from here? You clearly don’t wish to go home.”

Oh.

Well.

That _would_ be helpful.

The forest bent to the will of the great Fionn Mac Cumhail.

The trail seemed to become smoother and less lined with roots and rocks and puddles. The rain grew ever lighter. No _fae_ or animals skittered across their path.

The Hunter plodded along like he was out for a leisurely stroll. His hand was enormous. Bigger than Dad’s, for sure, maybe even bigger than the one the giant so long ago had placed on Matt’s shoulders on the plains. It was rough with callouses and warm all the way through.

And that was all fine, but Matt had a question burning a hole in his tongue.

“Hunter?” he asked after a while.

The giant made a noise of acknowledgement.

“Apologies for losing my temper,” Matt said.

The Hunter huffed a laugh.

“I remember the days of hot emotions,” he said. “I am old now and they do not come on so quickly. Don’t fret about it, selkie-child.”

Matt dipped his head and chewed his lip for another several yards.

“What did you mean when you said that this forest wants me?” he asked.

The giant took a long time to answer.

“A long time ago, the lake which you climbed out of was home to a family of selkies,” he said. “But a fire came and burned the summit of this mountain. It burned everything in it—the trees, the homes built between them, and the _fae_ living there. Only one of the selkies from the lake survived, but it was too young, Maidiú, to live without its mother. I found it covered in ash and took as far as I could go. Another cow took the child and raised it as her own, but the lake has since remained vacant—except for a short time when another young selkie came to us here in the forest and played songs for us and sang to us. We hoped she would stay. We prayed she would stay. But her people ostracized her and so she left this land for kinder shores.”

Ah.

“I don’t think I can stay here,” Matt said.

“Not now,” the Hunter said. “No, you have too much work ahead of you. But perhaps your mother will return one day, when she has finished her work on the other shores. And then perhaps you will want to return when you are older and ready to retire from the heat in your heart.”

Never.

Matt would never retire from the rage.

He’d known this for years.

He would die in his own flames.

But it was a nice thought. A nice idea.

It was comforting to imagine himself and Foggy living on the island one day, when their humans in New York were long dead and safely shepherded to wherever they wanted to go. Or maybe, in another timeline, every few years, he and Fogs could close the office for a few months or maybe a year and come here to re-center themselves.

Foggy would never live in the forest or on the mountain. Never.

But perhaps there was a chance that Matt could? For just a few days here and there? Or maybe he could build a little cabin on the edge of the lake to come up to sometimes, and, if Mum and Dad ever did want to come back, they could live there at the lake and find peace and quiet between themselves.

The Sister did love that basket. She’d brought Matt there as a pup and Matt knew now that she’d done it to show him off to the others and to teach him what she had learned in her time in the forest. It was a rare moment where she’d let herself relax and she’d let Matt be her son for once. Not just her pup. Not just this unwanted responsibility she was saddled with as a consequence of falling in love with a particularly anxious human.

He swallowed.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said quietly to the Hunter.

“Take your time, selkie-child,” the Hunter told him. “You have more of it than you think.”

Fionn Mac Cumhail took him to a place where a brook ran downhill and the sound of shuffling leaves overhead came only from behind them.

“I cannot leave the forests of this island,” the Hunter told Matt. “But the plains are ahead of you. And the nest that you seek is two miles straight that way. Don’t waver. Don’t dawdle. And don’t stop, do you hear?”

Yes.

He heard.

“Best of luck, selkie-child. Come back to us when you’ve found your coat,” the Hunter said.

And then he was gone.

Matt turned around, but it was cold where the giant had been. Empty. There was only soft birdsong and the sound of dripping water.

He turned back towards the plains.

Well, that was the lake, the mountain, and the giant down.

The plains were just as confusing as they’d been when Matt was small and the lack of rain made the journey even more aggravating, but Matt could smell just the lightest bit of smoke off in the distance and so he put a mental pin in it and honed everything in, in that direction.

He had to look like the most motivated bog rambler in human history.

There was not a single bog on this moor that he had not fallen into, he decided, and by god, he would hit every one of them before sunrise .

He started counting them at some point without realizing he was doing it and at some point, he stopped because on top of the faint smell of smoke was another one. A familiar smell.

He turned his face all around him.

Peter.

He could smell Peter. The kid always smelled like basil for reasons that Matt had never been able to work out. It was enough that even Wade had noticed it and asked Pete what he was bathing in these days.

Peter thought they were both insane. He declared them ancient, unknowable beings and plodded happily along with his life, deaf to their pleading for answers.

Peter smelled like basil some days and chamomile the rest of them and that was that.

The urge to follow the floral smell was strong, but Matt’s confusion was even stronger.

What was Peter doing out on the moors? He was supposed to be hunting down Manannán’s hound. Was the hound out this way? If yes, then Matt needed to get a move on.

He didn’t want to have to stare down a hunting dog at night. He was only one seal, and not even that at the moment.

He relocated the smoke and pressed on at double time.

The owl witch lived fairly far out on the moors. It must have taken Matt somewhere between a thirty minutes to an hour to fall in a very familiar river.

He burst out of it in accomplishment.

Stick or no stick, he, Matthew Michael Murdock, the man without fear, the devil of Hell’s Kitchen, had made it.

He stood tall in the river in triumph.

He sort of knew where he was now. The owl witch would be to the northwest, the waterman would be to the east. All he needed now was a way to get up to the owl witch’s nest. And, well. To find it.

“Here, nesty-nesty,” he murmured, hunting around with his face. “I’ve got bones for you to pick. You hate them—do you remember that window I sma—AGH.”

“RED. The FUCK, man. The _hell_ kinda welcome is that?”

Matt’s knuckles throbbed a bit and blinked ahead of him in shock.

“Wade?” he asked, still searching.

“Jesus.”

Wade’s familiar broad shoulders pulled themselves up out of the river. “What’s the matter with you, kid?”

Matt was speechless.

“How—when—How long have you been there?” he asked.

Wade sniffed and seemed to rub at his face, grumbling.

“Enough to hear you loving on Miss Nesty-nesty,” he huffed. “And here I was, thinkin’ that my l’il boo-boo Red was out here, ‘bout to drown himself in a fuckin’ river. See if I help you again, eh?”

Matt realized he was still holding his fist up and slowly dropped it.

“You’ve been here for a while?” he asked.

“Not really,” Wade said. “I was _tryin’_ to surprise y’all tomorrow morning. Got you souvenirs and shit from that great English city Pembroke, you know? I got corgis of every color. I got your blue corgi, your green corgi, your purple people eatin’ corgi--”

Pem…broke?

“Wade, you caught a ferry here?” Matt asked.

Wade scoffed.

“A ferry? A ferry? Listen to you, ‘Wade you caught a ferry?’ Fishing boat, babe. You may call me Captain,” Wade said. “After you’re done callin’ me your savior that is. What’s the deal, Redthew? You trying to rekindle an old flame out here with a bog body?”

Ew.

No.

“Owl witch,” Matt said.

“You’re trying to fuck an _owl witch_?” Wade demanded.

Wait, no.

“Fucking nasty boy you are, I knew it.”

Wait, no.

“Well, alright. If that’s your dream, I guess I’m here to help.”

“Wade, I’m not trying to fuck the owl witch,” Matt said. “I’m trying to meet her and thank her for kidnapping me or something.”

Wade went still.

“Come here, hon,” he said sympathetically.

“I’m not concussed,” Matt said.

“Come here, you sweet l’il thing. Let papa see that poor head of yours—”

“Wade.”

Matt fended off the incoming hands. He could feel his blood pressure crawling higher with each passing second.

“I’m _serious_ ,” he said. “The sea god gave me this task. I’ve got to honor people who helped me back when I was a kid.”

“Helped you?” Wade repeated, pulling back. “How’d this broad help you?”

Matt didn’t know. But that wasn’t his problem. He just had to honor her.

“You’re gonna honor some child abuser?” Wade said.

And like.

When he put it like that it did sound pretty stupid.

“Maybe she’s changed,” Matt said. “Maybe she regrets doing it or she had a reason or—”

Wade’s silence was, as it always seemed to be, judgmental as hell.

“Or maybe we skip the owl witch?” Matt said a little helplessly.

“Oh no, I’m just here for the ride,” Wade said. “If you wanna go roll around in the hay with some pedophile, that’s your bag, boo. Just lemme know when you’re ready to come down.”

Yick.

“That’s disgusting,” Matt scowled.

“I’m not the one fantasizing,” Wade said.

“I’m not fantasizing,” Matt said. Then froze.

“Wait, Wade can you see her nest?” he asked.

Wade’s silence told Matt everything he needed to know.

Everything.

“Is she watching us?” He asked a little nervously.

Wade lifted his head upwards and hummed.

“Not happy,” he observed.

Shit.

“Go away,” Matt said flapping at the guy. Wade leaned back but didn’t move. Matt gave him a push. He planted himself. “ _Wade_. Go away. If she’s watching, she’s gonna think I’m plottin’, but I’m not plottin’, I’m just trying to talk.”

Wade tipped himself towards the owl witch who was, no doubt, glaring back down at him. He gave her a one-finger salute.

“WADE,” Matt said, shoving him as hard as he could.

“’Sup?” Wade asked casually.

“MOVE.”

“Sure thing, toots. Where?”

“ANYWHERE. NOT HERE. GO.”

Wade considered this with many unnecessary sound effects. Matt groaned.

“You’re ruining this for me,” he said. “I’m just—I trying to get my coat back, Wade. I need her to help me get my coat back. Either clear out or help me, already.”

The plea seemed to snap Wade out of his bad mood. His stiff muscles loosened up.

“Fine, fine. I’ll help you talk to the bird lady,” he said.

Matt lit up.

“You will?” he asked.

Wade groaned.

“I will,” he said.

The witch lived in a nest that was dozens of yards above the ground. Wade gave her the finger the whole way up the gnarled, ancient trees that Wade claimed braided together into an enormous cage at the top, which cradled the home. He called the whole thing a ‘bad look’ and explained by saying that it looked like a ‘land lighthouse but with an angry canary’ at the top.

Matt almost made him wait outside the door. But instead, he thought of this witch carrying him, struggling like hell at eight-years-old, over treetops before dumping him down in her living room and tying him up there.

Wade was a great back up plan, now that Matt thought about it.

He found the door with his knuckles and knocked twice.

Wade reached forward and pulled him back a step by his collar.

The door swung outwards for some reason.

“Well, well, well,” the owl witch’s high, breathy voice said. “What rude visitors I have.”

Matt didn’t know what to say.

‘You kidnapped me and tried to kill my mom’ probably was not the right thing to say here. He was trying to get even with these people, not start feuds.

He dropped his head instead. It always seemed to work with older _fae_ , they liked to feel respected, even when they clearly were not. Matt thought that some of them liked it even more then.

“Hm,” the witch said. Matt kept his head down. “You’ve grown selkie-child. Are you here for the trainee? You can’t have him, if so. He’s too talented for the likes of you sea folk.”

The…what?

“Matt!”

The _what_.

“WADE!!!”

Matt could just barely hear Wade’s heartbeat over his own.

The witch moved aside just in time for Peter— _Peter_ , as in, Peter Benjamin Spiderman Parker—to come flying out of the home to tackle Wade and bury himself in his chest.

Time seemed to stop.

“Are you guys here to help us with the hound?” Peter asked Matt brightly, hands still wrapped around Wade. Johnny poked his head out of the door and got excited and went to go plaster himself around Peter’s back.

Wade turned his face towards Matt, but even if Matt could have read his expression, nothing would have changed.

“I think,” Matt told the owl witch weakly, “That there has been a misunderstanding.”


	10. when your heart is a pearl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I sail to England catchin’ lobster, I sail to Ireland catchin’ salmon, and now I’m here, diggin’ a fuckin’ hole, Red. Is this all I am to you people? Just a pile a brawn with thumbs?” Wade lamented about two feet deep in the dirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short chapter this time. More from Matt's POV later.

Of course Peter had made friends with the owl witch.

Of course the owl witch considered him one of her kind.

Matt didn’t know why he’d thought that he could just go out and have his own Task go along its course nice and smoothly.

He’d forgotten who he was. He’d forgotten who Peter was.

“—and then Sergeant Barnes said ‘fine, go find the fuckin’ owl witch, whatever. Just stay quiet already’ so me and Johnny decided that if those guys were going to go the conventional medicine route than it wouldn’t hurt if we went the other way to cover all our bases and—” Peter nattered.

Wade, at least, seemed to grasped the gravity of the present situation. He’d put himself between Peter the owl witch and her feathered arms with the kind of wariness he usually reserved for stray-dog situations.

Although, now that Matt was thinking about it, what they were looking at presently was a normal Peter + Stray Dog situation with the added elements of fire and lighter fluid.

This experience was nothing like Matt had expected it would go.

“Wait,” he said, “This farmer’s kid loves the sea?”

“Yeah,” Peter said with a severe frown. “Sergeant Barnes thinks she might kill herself over it.”

Dude, what?

“That why we asked Mrs. Corrigan if she knew of any spells that could help this girl calm down a little bit,” Peter said.

Matt just—

What.

“Pete, that’s not how this works,” Matt said.

“Yeah, you can achieve artificial calm with a good knock to the head, kiddo, you ain’t need a spell for that shit,” Wade added.

“Wade, no,” Matt groaned.

“That’s what Mrs. Corrigan was telling us,” Peter said waving in the owl witch’s direction with not a lick of fear in him.

“She says that the best thing to do is to give this lady the talking cure,” Johnny reported.

The. Talking. Cure.

“That’s therapy,” Matt moaned into his hands. “That’s therapy, children.”

“Yeah, we googled it,” Peter reported. Johnny nodded enthusiastically.

Matt was so tired. He had come so far. He had met Fionn Mac Cumhail. Fallen in 24 bogs. Felt guilt for his mother. Felt triumph for the river.

And now he was here. With _these_ numbskulls.

“Ma’am, is there anything I can do to honor you before I die right here, right now?” he asked the witch.

She seemed entertained.

“This is your trainee, is he not?” she asked.

Matt blinked.

“Who, Peter?” he asked. “He’s not like, _my_ trainee. I have trained him, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The witch huffed and hooted low in her throat while she did.

“You did not bring him here then?”

Well, like. Technically yes, but an airplane had also technically brought them here.

“Give me the trainee for some time,” the owl witch said. “He is a quick learner and there is no one in the New World who speaks my spells anymore.”

Peter wriggled around in Wade’s grip on him and hummed happily.

He was evidently in his element. Matt considered him. Then the witch.

“We aren’t here for long,” he said, “And he’s not mine to give.”

“No, she’s nice, Matt. Lemme stay,” Peter pleaded. “Mrs. Doyle just shouts at me and she bound Johnny to a stool for being too wiggly. Mrs. Corrigan’s a much better witch—she even knows fire magic, right Johnny?”

She—

She knew—

Matt jerked towards the witch. He tried to breathe steady.

The witch didn’t move.

“Is he not your ally, selkie-child?” she asked. “What are you afraid of?”

“You burned that mountain,” Matt said. “You killed the lake selkies. _You_ did that. You wanted to burn me, too.”

“That was a long time ago,” the owl witch said. “My fire was hungry. It was dying--barely embers--back when you were a good offering. You have nothing to fear now. She has passed.”

Matt’s chest flared with heat.

“You were going to feed me to your fire demon?” he snapped, standing up. “You would disgrace my mother—shame her to our people for losing her pup--for your dying demon?”

He couldn’t see the witch’s face but he could feel the heartbeats around the room.

“That is the bond, selkie-child,” the owl witch said sadly, “You do many things for those you love. And besides, your mother is plenty fertile still. She could have had a new pup with that hero of hers. She could still have a new pup if she was so willing.”

Matt could barely swallow.

“No,” he said. “You picked her because she’s a forest selkie. You wanted _her_ gone. It was never about me. You’d claimed the summit lake as your fire’s shrine, hadn’t you? And Mum was there, with me, threatening to make it into something living again, wasn’t she?”

The owl witch’s heartbeat fluttered. It was faster than anyone else’s. But it went faster still at the accusation.

“I thought you were here to get your coat back, selkie-child,” the owl witch hooted coolly. “For that, you must please me, not anger me. And let me inform you, you are _angering_ me.”

Matt felt his jaw harden.

He needed the coat.

He had Fisk on hold back home. The feeling of those horribly soft fingers shaking Matt’s own rough ones still trailed across his hands.

People were depending on him. Not just the _fae_ Fisk had trapped, but all of the people he would hurt in the future.

Matt ground his teeth.

“If you want a grave for your fire, then I will build you one,” he said.

The owl witch’s heart paused. Matt could feel the tension in the room swoop up towards surprise.

“Say that again,” the owl witch said.

“I said I’ll build you a grave to honor your fire,” Matt said. “Pick a place. I’ll do it tonight.”

“For what?” the owl witch said suspiciously.

“For your honor,” Matt said immediately. “And for the safety of my mother. It is the boy’s choice what he learns from you. This is my offering.”

He heard the owl witch take a shuffling step back and then let out a flurry of little hoots. They were delighted. Pleased.

Matt felt relief flood his limbs.

“You _are_ a clever little thing, you know that, selkie?” the owl witch said. “Very sharp. I should have known from the first time you escaped me. Fine. Yes, build a shrine for my fire and give me time to teach this wee one spells and you will have both my approval and a promise of protection on behalf of the selkie Margaret.”

Matt breathed out.

“Thank you,” he said.

“No,” the witch cooed. “Thank _you_.”

It was a good job that Wade had come after all.

“I sail to England catchin’ lobster, I sail to Ireland catchin’ salmon, and now I’m here, diggin’ a fuckin’ hole, Red. Is this all I am to you people? Just a pile a brawn with thumbs?” Wade lamented about two feet deep in the dirt.

Matt was panting.

He didn’t have the energy to respond.

“You can stop,” he said. “I can do it.”

“I ain’t stoppin’,” Wade groaned. “Complainin’ makes these things go faster—hey, did I ever tell you about the time I dammed the local creek?”

“No,” Matt huffed, throwing another shovelful of dirt out of their hole.

“Blamed it on the beavers, man. Ah, youth, am I right?” Wade cackled.

Sure, Wade.

Whatever you want. 

They filled the hole with rock all around its edges and cobbled it as best as they could. Matt’s fingers shook as he cracked a piece of flint and steel together into the handful of kindling they’d scraped together out of marsh reeds. Wade cheered when it caught.

This little pile of fluff was lowered into the newly cobbled hole.

Matt and Wade laid mostly-dry hawthorn on top of it and when it was crackling away, Matt dug out the pearl the owl witch had handed him. She told him that it was white and inscribed in gold with her fire’s name. Matt held it over the flames and tipped his hand.

The pearl rolled out of it into the center of the blaze.

They left the fire burn.

Matt prayed in the name of _Aoibhinn_.

Glory to her radiance. Honor to her embers.

Awe to her power. And yearning in her remembrance.

Honor to _Aoibhinn_.

Wade helped Matt scratch the name into the heavy, round piece of wood that was laid over the short stone wall they built around the hole. Together, they hauled a heavy, moss-covered stone onto the center of the wood.

It would be a fireplace on the moor in years to come. The pearl would sink into the ashes in it and slowly, slowly, it would tunnel down through the earth until it fused with the hard rock down there. Any fires lit in the dry bowl would honor Aoibhinn now.

“Done?” Wade asked.

“Done,” Matt told him.

They got back to the nest cottage, covered in mud from head to toe and found Peter humming softly with Johnny with the owl witch peering over his shoulder at something he was writing. They weren’t done with lessons yet. She sent Matt and Wade to clean up and have a cup of tea until she was satisfied that trainee and fire had absorbed this particular spell.

Matt’s hands stopped shaking once they were warmed by the mug in them. Wade critiqued the owl witch’s interior design for him.

Eventually, just as Matt caught himself nodding off, the children were released.

“You are a man of your word, selkie,” the owl witch told him in the doorway of her home. “And I am one of mine. Please take my apologies for actions committed in desperation in years past and consider us even in present times.”

Matt dipped his head, exhausted.

He kind of got it, in the end, even it sucked. He might not forgive this woman, but he’d done loads of stupid shit trying to save a handful of people himself.

“Let’s start new,” he sighed. “Let’s just start new. From here. Right now. You can call me Matthew.”

“And you may call me ‘Macha,’” the owl witch told him. “And your witch and fire are always welcome here.”

And so they were.

The door closed and so did another chapter.

Matt’s shoulders felt lighter.

“Now what?” Peter asked him. “Should we go back to the Caps?”

“Hm?” Matt said. “Yeah, probably. I’m about to go do something stupid, though, so it doesn’t matter too much either way.”

He felt the others’ stares.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Watches and phones were checked.

“3:30am,” Peter reported.

Plenty of time.

“If you don’t wanna go back to the Caps, y’all wanna take a walk with me?” Matt asked. “I gotta go spelunkin’.”

“Why Redthew, I thought you’d never ask,” Wade crooned.

It was much, _much_ easier to find the cave with a load of sighted people on hand.

God bless sighted people.

Also fuck ‘em.

Whatever. Matt’s thoughts weren’t coming on overly coherent at the moment. He was tired. He tucked a hand in Wade’s elbow and Wade was thankfully mindful of the extraordinary day he was having and let him space out while the kids made nuisances of themselves on the way to the dry stone wall.

They were very excited to have learned magic relevant to their circumstances.

They were very excited not to be saddled with the Caps. They were sorry that Matt had had a shit experience before with their new friend and mumbled apologies about it, which Matt waved off.

Mostly, however, they were worried about the hound and the girl back across the moors. Matt could only tell them that there would be time to deal with the hound tomorrow, after he’d slept for at least eight hours. It sounded to him like the best course of action there was telling Anna Nelson that there was a young lady suffering from love of the sea. Or alternatively, Mum.

It wasn’t the first nor would it be the last time that this had happened on the island. It was a pretty consistent thing that selkies ran into.

The sister, an experienced hand in such things, would go put an end to that shit immediately if asked. No question about it. She had dragged Matt kicking and screaming through plenty of depressive episodes; she was afraid of no one and she would nun some sense into this gal’s father if that didn’t work.

“Absolutely worse case scenario, we send Foggy and he does his mating dance and makes her laugh so hard she cries,” Matt sniffed at Peter’s surprised silence.

“Does Foggy mating dance at you?” Johnny asked.

“He tries,” Matt snickered.

“Does it work?” Johnny asked.

“Every time,” Matt hummed. “I am _very_ easy.”

Wade cackled.

“Hello stranger,” Dad said from the side of the cave when they finally got there.

Wade and Peter lost their goddamn minds.

“Heya, pops,” Matt said. “You’re early.”

“You’re late,” Dad said. “I’ve been here for ages. Your mama’s tried to lure me into that hellhole three times already. Thinks I’m still that stupid.”

“SIR,” Wade said out of nowhere. “I REQUIRE YOUR LICENSE AND REGISTRATION.”

“Is she in there?” Matt asked.

“I dunno, she could be anywhere. Little feet and all that,” Dad said with a shrug.

“SIR,” Wade repeated forcefully.

“Who’s this lug?” Dad asked with zero grace, as was his way. Matt heard Wade’s offense plain as day through his gasp.

“Friends,” Matt said. “This is Wade. And this is Peter. Peter sat next to you on the plane.”

Peter ducked under Matt’s arm at full intensity.

“You’re Dad!” he announced.

There was a pause.

Dad laughed.

“Yeah, kiddo. That’s me,” he said. “I’m Dad. You can just call me ‘Jack,’ though.”

Wade had a small meltdown.

“I’m gonna call you Dad. Are you gonna help Matt from here?” Peter asked.

“I’m gonna try,” Dad said, very amused.

“Can we still come?” Peter asked. “Don’t worry, my fire can waterproof himself.”

“I can!” Johnny promised.

“He’s very good in caves,” Peter added.

“I am!” Johnny confirmed.

“Well, that’s helpful. Whaddya think, Matty. You know what this guy wants from you?” Dad asked.

Matt did actually.

This one he knew.

“They can come,” he said. “Is Fogs on the other side?”

“Is indeed,” Dad promised. “You ready, champ?”

“Oh my god, he calls him ‘champ,’” Wade whispered to Peter. “Baby boxer.”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Matty sighed. “Come along, idiots. You are vital to this operation for once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wade cannot fly out of New York because he was Badly Behaved once, so he caught a quick flight out of New Jersey and ended up in France.


	11. to lend a hand and ear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Jonathan,” Sister Maggie’s voice up ahead said lightly. “If you carry on insulting my pup, then I really am going to trade you for a new flute from the _seanchaidhe._ ” 
> 
> Peter and Johnny looked back to Mr. Murdock’s increasingly bright outline at the same time. 
> 
> He scowled. 
> 
> “He’s only your pup when he’s arguing with me,” he pointed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took so long, but you know. Pandemics apparently happen. 
> 
> Just for your reference a 'fetch' is a doppleganger of sorts in Irish mythology.  
>  A 'seanchaidhe' is a storyteller (just as a note, I'm trying to use the more archaic forms of these words because we're handling ancient sorts of people and ideas.), if you're looking up the terms, you can look it up using the spelling 'seanchaí.'

Matt’s dad was very, very tall and very, very strong and Peter felt kind of awed just looking at him. He looked like a hero was supposed to look, Peter decided, and even more so because he didn’t seem to like Peter looking at him for too long.

He was shy. He kept ducking behind the Sister before flailing around for a second and grabbing the back of Matt’s shirt and pulling him away from things, which they then proceeded to argue and flail over as a father-son team.

 _Wild_.

“I know where I am, Dad,” Matt accused Mr. Murdock.

“Then where are we? Go on, full picture for me,” Mr. Murdock demanded.

“In a cave,” Matt said.

“Next to deep water,” Mr. Murdock tacked on. “And rocks—rocks shaped like _teeth_ , Matthew—”

“They ain’t shaped like teeth,” Matt justified, sounding more like his dad now than the Sister and Foggy.

“How the hell do you know what they’re shaped like?—I’m sayin’ they’re shaped like teeth and some of us here only got one life at the moment, _including_ certain secret carrot-tops so—”

The light from the cave’s entrance lit up a few spots in the deep water ahead of them and gave a Peter a dim impression of Matt’s complete and total readiness to throw himself in that dark abyss at any moment now.

Wade appeared seconds from following him out of delight.

“Dad,” Matt said definitively. “I’m going to leave you with him if you keep this up.”

Mr. Murdock went stiff all over.

“Rude,” he said.

“Mum,” Matt said. “Can we just leave him here?”

“I don’t mind,” Sister Maggie said from somewhere ahead in the dark.

Mr. Murdock got a little brighter in his aggravation. Matt made a sound somewhere between a laugh and hum.

“I should have gone straight into the navy,” Mr. Murdock announced.

“Whatever you say, pops,” Matt said.

“Shoulda joined it and just drowned from the get-go,” Mr. Murdock carried on. “No selkies. No lighthouses. No _pups_.”

“I’m your son,” Matt corrected over his shoulder, picking his way carefully ahead into the dark by trailing a hand across the faces of the rocks that bracketed the small trail along the side of the cave’s central pool.

“ _Pup_ ,” Mr. Murdock huffed. “God knows my _son_ knows better than to give such cheek.”

“Jonathan,” Sister Maggie’s voice up ahead said lightly. “If you carry on insulting my pup, then I really am going to trade you for a new flute from the _seanchaidhe_.”

Peter and Johnny looked back to Mr. Murdock’s increasingly bright outline at the same time.

He scowled.

“He’s only your pup when he’s arguing with me,” he pointed out.

Sister Maggie finally, finally appeared up ahead on the edge of a towering rock formation that looked a little like a bridge. Peter could barely see her moving skirts, but she seemed dangerously close to the edge of the bridge’s short walls there.

“Settle,” she said simply.

“Get off of there,” Mr. Murdock said back.

The sister remained where she was. Listening. Her face was tinted slightly orange on one side from Johnny’s internal lantern and blue on the other from the cave’s water’s reflections.

Matt stopped where he was and listened, too.

He made a soft, quizzical noise which Sister Maggie up ahead echoed. Mr. Murdock crossed the bridge to its center and neatly lifted the Sister off of the edge of its wall. He put her down safely on its central path. Matt surged forward, clipped his hip on a rock and swore, and ducked around Mr. Murdock to the other side of Sister Maggie, who had stepped back up onto the bridge’s wall the second Mr. Murdock looked away.

They both listened.

Mr. Murdock removed one and then the other from the wall.

Wade made a choked off noise behind the hands on his face.

“What’s that?” Matt asked.

One second, they were all in a line, and the next, Peter found himself sandwiched between Wade and Johnny, looking ahead at an arrow-formation of Murdocks, all of whom seemed to be competing to protect the others from the dark nothingness on the other side of the bridge. Matt’s shoulders were up and his fingers had started to curl in that familiar, Daredevil flex. Sister Maggie had a hand clutched as far as it would go around Mr. Murdock’s wrist, and Mr. Murdock, to Peter’s surprise, had moved out in front of both of those two and planted his feet a shoulder’s width apart. All three remained dead still.

“He wears a bell,” Sister Maggie said cautiously.

“It’s a different bell,” Matt countered.

“What is it, then?” Mr. Murdock asked without moving his face.

Sister Maggie shushed him.

Johnny jostled Peter’s arm and reached over to get a palm over the mark on his wrist.

“I’m gonna put out the light,” he whispered.

Oh, fun.

“Copy that, kiddo,” Wade said.

Johnny breathed out and the lantern shadows around them dimmed until they were no more. The dark swept in and Peter’s eyes made colorful circles in its wake before they settled into the nothingness. He blinked and tried to stay even. Slowly, his vision started to make shapes again. Up ahead, he could just barely see the outline of Mr. Murdock’s faint glow.

But now, more importantly, he could hear the scrape of something metal.

It rose and fell. Like it was being tapped against the ground every other beat.

“ _Dúlamán na binne buí, dúlamán Gaelach_ ,” a hoarse, stuttering tenor sang. “ _Dúlamán na farraige, be'fhearr a bhí in Éirinn_.”

Silence followed. There wasn’t even an echo, only the distant drip of water droplets into the pools below.

“Selkie-child,” that hoarse voice said ahead of them. “You’ve come home. I’ve been waiting for you.”

There was a long pause. Peter didn’t know what was happening up ahead. It was too dark to see. He glanced down towards the ground and froze.

Johnny’s fingers were glowing ever so slightly around his name on Peter’s arm. Peter had never seen the mark light up before.

Johnny seemed to sense him looking at it and closed his fingers to better hide it.

“Selkie-child?”

Peter lifted his head back in the Murdocks’ direction.

“Why don’t you answer?”

That dripping noise seemed louder than ever.

“Well, pal,” Mr. Murdock’s voice said, “Ya might start with the fact that you’re feelin’ up the wrong guy.”

There was a violent rustle of someone rearing back.

“ _Fetch_ ,” Sister Maggie’s voice hissed. “What have you done with the _seanchaidhe_?”

There was a strange, rumbling noise in the dark ahead.

“Insolent,” the voice said, echoing off the walls now. “I _am_ the _seanchaidhe_.”

“Where is he?” Matt growled low and deep and familiar.

“Selkie-child,” the voice gasped. “There you are. Come here, boy.”

“What have you done with him?” Matt demanded.

“You owe me an offering,” the voice said, softer now and only getting more so. “Do you remember what I asked you to bring to me?”

Matt said nothing.

“Do you remember, selkie?” the voice insisted.

“Jack,” Sister Maggie cautioned. “Leave it. Let him answer.”

The grit and crunch of steps being taken sounded out on the bridge.

“I remember,” Matt said.

“Tell me,” the voice said, almost desperately. “Tell me what you remember.”

“I remember,” Matt said, softer now. “That the water here was cold.”

“The offering, selkie,” the voice encouraged.

“I remember being so alone,” Matt told it. “And so afraid. And I remember asking if I could come back to this place.”

“The offering,” the voice whispered. “Do you remember?”

“The great _seanchaidhe_ of this place held me as a child,” Matt told it. “And guided me out of this cave.”

“In return for what?” the voice breathed.

Matt said nothing.

“In return for _what_ , selkie?” the voice demanded.

“My coat,” Matt said.

There was a sharp sound like a gasp.

“Lies,” the voice suddenly creaked. “Lies. Lies. _LIES.”_

The volume roared through the cave and echoed off a stone ceiling that seemed too high and too wide for a cave that barely peeked out from the side of a cliff in the countryside.

“I’m not lying,” Matt said.

“You _lie_ , selkie,” the voice roared. “And for your lies, you will be punished.”

Rock shuddered and grated against itself all around. The bridge shook. Johnny’s hand tightened around Peter’s wrist.

“Where is the Great _Seanchaidhe_ ,” Matt shouted through the roar. “What have you done with him?”

“I _am_ the Great _Seanchaidhe_ ,” The voice thundered.

“You’re not,” Matt thundered back. “This isn’t his cave. That isn’t his bell. And you do not deserve his offering. You can’t even tell that you’re talking to a blind selkie.”

The rumbling seemed to break all of the sudden.

“Blind?” the voice repeated.

“Blind,” Matt confirmed. “Or did you forget, O’ Wise Waterman?”

 _“_ What use is a blind selkie?” the voice snarled.

“You tell me,” Matt said. His voice sounded different now, somehow. “How far did you travel to get your hands on a selkie pup, huh?”

The tinkle of metal started to move away from them.

“HEY,” Matt barked.

The metal sound stopped.

“You are of no use to me,” its owner whispered.

“That’s too bad,” Matt said back. “Because it turns out that my superpower is that I can see in the dark.”

Peter jumped at the crack-slap of Matt’s fist connecting with flesh and bone.

A thud followed and a beat after it brought silence.

But something was wrong. Something was different. It was dark all around them, but the world started to tilt and twist and swirl.

Peter felt like he was reeling.

And then he was freezing. Absolutely freezing. A shock to the system followed by the realization that he couldn’t breathe and everything was closing in on him.

He was underwater.

It was too dark to see. Even underwater. Flailing his hands only brought them into contact with cold and colder currents. He couldn’t breathe. He had to go up.

He crashed through the surface and shook his head and called out for help. When there was no answer, he called out for the others by name.

Still nothing.

He ducked back down and felt around with his arms splayed as wide as he could in case someone was stuck under the surface.

It was so cold. His wrists and fingers ached with it.

He had to go back up.

He surfaced again and gasped in air that was multitudes warmer than his body.

“Wade?” He called.

The sound echoed, but, he realized, the sloshing sound was settling.

There was no other splashing or gasping or struggling around him. It was just him in this pool.

“Johnny?” he asked, treading water around in a circle. It was too dark. He couldn’t see anything.

“Matt?” He called.

His own voice ricocheted off the rocks hoarding the pool as their own.

Frigid water lapped at his neck, burning new lines into his throat with every miniscule wave. His breath came shakily.

He needed to get out of the water.

Getting out was easier said than done. Swimming blindly in a random direction until he couldn’t anymore brought Peter a sharp rock with lots of pieces jutting out of it.

They bit at his skin and Peter was sure that his fingers were bleeding. But he had no choice but to let them bleed. He had to trace them across the rock faces just as Matt had done earlier, feeling for a step or a gap or something—anything—to grab onto to pull himself up.

He kept going. The rock shore seemed to curve. It curved and it curved and Peter realized that the pool was circular.

It had no shores or steps up or down.

He tried not to panic. He had a healing factor which would buy him some extra time from hypothermia.

Johnny didn’t, though.

Johnny needed time to shield himself from the water. Johnny couldn’t stay in water for very long.

Johnny—

Wait.

 _Johnny_.

Peter ripped his wrist out of the water and stared at it.

Johnny was still alive. His name shimmered on Peter’s wrist, emanating a candle-like light around the edges of the lines. It was dark enough in the cave that that was enough to show Peter the outlines of the rocks nearest him. If he went as still as he could, he could almost see the reflections of the water.

He tried to hold still with his arm held aloft.

The light was dim and the ceiling was high—Johnny’s name wasn’t strong enough to bring it out of the dark. The rocks all around the pool threw shadows in layers upon layers, like shark’s teeth, up to what looked like a gap between them and the hazy shape of another set of teeth climbing out from the wall of solid darkness on the other side of the gap.

Peter stared at it.

Maybe a path?

He could probably get up there.

And if it wasn’t a path, then anywhere that was out of this water was better than being in it.

Okay.

Plan made.

He sunk his arm back into the freezing, aching pool and took a breath to calm himself. Then he started swimming.

The rocks were sharp and his shoes were wet and squeaky and clumsy and May was going to _freak_ once she found out about this, but eventually, Peter slogged his way up to the top row of teeth. And lo and behold—certainly not by luck or fortune—there was indeed a path.

Now it was a matter of picking which way to follow it.

He shouted in both directions—called the names of his friends and waited.

Waited.

There was nothing.

Welp. Beggars can’t be choosers.

He went right.

Going right lead him to a bunch of winding, sandy paths that wove around huge towers of stalagmites. He slipped a few times and tripped loads with Johnny’s name not quite bright enough to help him discern between puddles and stones’ shadows.

Soon he found himself climbing upwards.

Swearing stopped him dead in his tracks.

“Wade?” he called.

“What?” Wade snapped back nastily.

Oh, thank god.

“PETER.”

Oh, shit. Not just Wade.

Peter’s back met hard pebbles and rock and he groaned out loud from the impact.

Johnny didn’t care.

Johnny was freezing cold and drenching Peter’s previously slowly drying clothes. He pressed his cold cheek against Peter’s neck and made a sound like a sob.

“I’m okay,” Peter promised him.

He realized Johnny’s fist was pressed hard to the center of his chest. He winced as he worked out an arm to lay his own hand on top of it.

It took him a moment to realize that Johnny was holding something hard.

It was a familiar shape.

Johnny pulled himself off of him and dragged Peter up with.

“Give me—No, give me— _no_ —” he said, scrabbling hands across Peter’s soaked coat and then his own.

Peter stared at the amulet in his hand.

He’d never taken it off in his life.

Ever.

 _Ever_.

“Don’t move,” Johnny told him.

He ripped the cord in his hood out of its eyelet and pulled hard enough that it also slipped out of the opposite one. He threaded it with shaking hands through the amulet before wrapping it over and over around Peter’s wrist. When it was done, the makeshift bracelet felt thick. Heavy. A little like the ropes that Matt sometimes wore when he went out with near-deadly intent.

Only when the ends were securely knotted did Johnny sit back on his heels and look Peter in the face. He was putting off light again. His face flickered with it.

“You scared me,” he accused.

“You scared _me_ ,” Peter told him.

Johnny grimaced at him like this was somehow his fault anyways.

“Kids, I’m happy for your friendship bracelet exchange, but we got shit to do,” Wade’s voice interrupted.

Peter jerked his face up and found Wade’s shadow stood irritably on the edge of one of the giant rocks that stretched over the bay of stones that he and Johnny had apparently struggled their way out of. 

“We got separated,” Peter said.

“Yeah,” Wade sniffed. “Or we were never together in the first place and that fetch-thing fooled us into thinking we were.”

Man.

Talk about shit luck.

“Should we go find Matt?” Peter asked.

“Mm. I think seal-boy’s fine,” Wade said. “He’s got seal-mom and the Champ with him. I think our best bet right now is finding our way _out._ Then we can regroup and go get a barrel of fish or whatever to Hansel-and-Gretel them others out. _”_

Right.

Out.

Okay, out, Peter could do.

Out should have been easier than in, but Peter was looking at what was very clearly the top of a waterfall.

Wade contemplated this.

The trail between the tooth-rocks had lead them right into another pool of water which A) sucked and B) dipped down from that pool into another one which seemed to have once been an ancient forest. Huge columns of old tree trunks laid on top of each other across the water. Between them flashes of bright outside light shone through.

They’d have to navigate their way through the trees to get out, but the current was pretty strong and they didn’t know what was immediately beyond the trees.

If it was a sheer cliff, they were fucked.

If it was rapids, they were fucked.

Best case scenario, it was another pond-like thing where water collected before it tumbled off the cliff, and if that was the case, thn they’d have to be quick about get the hell across it and to land.

“I hate nature,” Wade declared.

Peter sighed.

“Hey, fire demon,” Wade asked over his shoulder. “Whaddya say we burn this here underground forest, eh? In the way of your people?”

Johnny stared at him.

“It’s wet wood,” he said flatly.

“So’s we’ve got a bit of a challenge,” Wade said with a shrug. “Nothin’ Baby Fantastic Fourth can’t handle, right?”

Johnny deadeyed him and then Peter.

This was a silent demand for clarification as to why they were not presently drowning this man. Peter decided to ignore it for now.

They’d been thinking for about fifteen minutes, battering around options and scenarios when a splash brought their attention back behind them.

Peter leapt up. Wade followed.

Mr. Murdock and his square jaw and giant shoulders shoved himself up for the second time and swore spectacularly.

He had some opinions about the cave.

They were not kind.

He had more opinions about selkies.

Peter thought that maybe he shouldn’t voice those for his own personal well-being.

It took him a second to notice Wade watching him with maximum fascination and then his complaints against God, the Island, and the universe died off a bit.

“Oh, hi,” he said. “Wrong turn.”

As if that explained anything whatsoever.

“Come,” Wade said with a welcoming arm, “Join us and tell us your woes, Father-boxer.”

Mr. Murdock stared at him with eyes that were the exact same color as Matt’s.

“I think Imma pass,” he said.

Matt’s dad seemed to have gotten separated from his selkies just like Peter had from Wade and Johnny. Was he concerned, though? Apparently not. He seemed more irritated than concerned, which Peter was going to take as a good thing.

“I spent ages avoidin’ goin’ spelunkin’,” Mr. Murdock lamented. “Did it once with my asshole brother upstate when I was fifteen and swore off it for life, but since I ain’t meant to catch a break in the next fourteen millennia, Matty took a likin’ to diggin’ goddamn _holes_ from the start, and ever since he figured that out, my life’s been nothin’ but tunnels and trails, I swear to God.”

“But you’ve been in this cave before?” Wade asked.

“What this thing? Yeah, I’ve done this thing,” Mr. Murdock huffed. “Only once, though. It ain’t _great_ , honestly. The ones underwater at least got a kinda fantasy element to them—you know, like that Little Mermaid shit?—this one’s full of nothin’ but rocks and an old guy in real need of a barber.”

Wade was charmed right out of his mind.

Peter couldn’t help but be too.

“Do you know where Matt is?” he asked.

Mr. Murdock glared back at the darkness behind them.

“Maybe,” he said with a slightly sour expression.

“Does he need help?” Peter asked, scooting over to the edge of his rock to settle in next to Johnny, who was dozing on his knees.

Mr. Murdock rubbed at the bottom half of his face in thought for a moment.

“Almost positively,” he said. “But not from us right at this minute.”

No?

“Nah,” Mr. Murdock hummed, slogging through the water and squinting between the logs at the light. “He needs his lute.”

Mr. Murdock wasn’t worried about his wife and kid because he was on a mission, it turned out. A mission to find Foggy.

He’d found the wrong exit. He was looking for another one. One he _thought_ he remembered the way to, but apparently didn’t because last time he was here, Sister Maggie had dragged him through the cave maze at what he described as ‘breakneck speed for a mouse.’

Peter wondered how he’d lived as long as he had with that kind of mouth on him in Sister Maggie’s presence.

Mr. Murdock didn’t bother with that, though, he had backtracking to do, which was fun and much more doable with him in the lead. It became even more fun and doable when he over-back-tracked and they finally found Matt and Sister Maggie arguing lightly in the hollow of an enormous stalagmite that had little flickering blue and white orbs floating around it like fireflies.

Both of them looked shocked and absolutely drenched when Mr. Murdock attempted to turn back to avoid certain embarrassment.

He was not successful.

Once the ritual shouting and defensiveness was gotten though, Mr. Murdock asked, “So did y’all find him yet or no?” and received grumpy expressions and an even louder reminder that he had his job and they had theirs.

Matt told him that he was on the _seanchaidhe’s_ trail, but he kept losing the hair he was following back to him, which was a statement that Peter’s brain refused to process.

Once Mr. Murdock had been satisfactorily banished by his family and they were set on a different route, one pointed out firmly by Sister Maggie with directions to ‘just _walk_ , Jonathan, don’t overthink this,’ he explained that a _seanchaidhe_ was a storyteller.

“The one who lives in this cave is a really old one—a _fae_ _seanchaidhe_ ,” Mr. Murdock explained. “No one knows how old he is, but his head is so full of stories and memories that he grew them out into hair, which is great for him because—you know, loads of free melon space. But it’s also shit for him because he forgot how to remember things. He’s also lonely, bless ‘im. Just wants to chat.”

Aw.

“He likes Matt, though?” Peter asked.

Mr. Murdock paused and drummed fingers against his heart once.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, he likes Matt. Come on, I remember where we are now.”

There was a turquoise circle in one of the cave’s many dips that was surrounded by the sound of rushing water. Mr. Murdock considered this with what Peter could only describe as maximum restlessness.

He seemed wary to get into the water there for some reason.

“It goes down pretty far and then back up,” he explained.

“Okay?” Peter said. “So we go in?”

“I dunno,” Mr. Murdock said. “I dunno if that’s a good idea. I’m wondering if maybe we should wait until Matty and Grace have found the _seanchaidhe_.”

Uh, why?

“I dunno, it’s just a feeling—I got loads of feelings,” Mr. Murdock rattled.

Wade watched this with a single arching brow.

“Hero Feelings, with a capital ‘h’ or just feelings-feelings?” he asked.

“I dunno,” Mr. Murdock sighed, “Maybe it’s fine. But there’s like, _timing_ with these kinds of things and I ain’t never gotten it right and obviously, I don’t wanna fuck this up since we’ve come all this way and—”

Ah.

Overthinking.

This was what Sister Maggie was talking about.

“Johnny do you wanna go first?” Peter asked him.

“Can I stay on the other side?” Johnny asked him. “It’s really wet in here. It’s making me sleepy.”

Yeah, that was cool. Johnny had already done his part in keeping Peter safe so far.

“Yeah, do you think maybe you can send Foggy to replace you?” he asked.

Johnny saluted his affirmative.

Johnny slipped into the water and took one big breath before ducking down into the turquoise. His shadow went lower and lower and then went out of sight.

It was about two minutes before a new shadow appeared, but instead of getting darker, it got brighter as it came to the surface and in no time, Foggy was breaking the surface and throwing his long hair over his shoulder with a wet slap.

“For the record,” he spat, climbing out of the water. “I hate this idea and don’t want to be here.”

“Duly noted,” Mr. Murdock said.

“I want it in writing,” Foggy told him. He wrung out his hair and shook out his tambourine and then the long, guitar-like thing that he’d had through over his shoulder.

Matt’s lute.

Mr. Murdock was much less anxious with another selkie around. Foggy asked him why he put up with all the bullying from Sister Maggie and Matt and he just shrugged.

Foggy told him that once he was done with his spirit-form-phase, he should seek therapy, and Mr. Murdock visibly recoiled at the thought. Foggy did not let him escape the discussion. He started listing out Mr. Murdock’s many, many traumas while gamely leading the way back towards Sister Maggie and Matt.

Peter figured that he had rights as Mr. Murdock’s _fae_ son-in-law to nag him, so he kept mum. He was cold and was getting tired. It was late (or early, rather). He wondered how long it would take to find the Great _Seanchaidhe_ , or, as Foggy called him ‘the Memory Man.’

Wade noticed this and offered him a piggy back ride, which he refused.

He was tired, not four.

Wade told him that if someone offered _him_ a piggy back ride, he’d take it in a fucking heartbeat.

Peter didn’t get it.

Wade put hands on his shoulders and steered him so that he was walking in front of him.

Matt and Sister Maggie were really in the sticks when Foggy sniffed them out. Forget the stalagmite. They were waist deep in water, sticking hands in a hole and making a whole lot of sounds that implied a whole lot of effort.

Foggy dropped a hand onto his hip.

“He’s stuck,” he said flatly.

Matt jerked his face up his way.

“Fogs!” he said in delight. “My prayers have been answered.”

“Fuck your prayers,” Foggy said immediately. “You can’t pay me to touch ‘im.”

Matt’s face fell. Peter realized that there was a pale, bony hand wrapped around one of his and one of the Sister’s.

“Dad?” Matt tried instead.

“I think not,” Sister Maggie said from the other side of the hole. “My human—you hear that?” she called into it, “ _My_ human.”

Um?

Okay?

There was a story there.

Mr. Murdock deferred to Foggy who rolled his whole head in exhaustion.

“Five of youse and four braincells altogether,” he groaned. “Peter has _super strength,_ Matthew.”

Matt froze and dropped the hand he’d been holding onto.

“Oh, right,” he said.

It took one pull and Peter was covered with hair.

So.

Much.

Hair.

And somewhere in all of that hair was a bag of bones who was whooping and hollering, having the time of his life.

Peter scrambled out from under the hair as best as he could and was dragged out of that which he couldn’t escape by Wade’s friendly hands. The hair followed him. It spilled out _everywhere_. It rolled out over the rocks and down into the water around them. It swept up dirt and mud and rocks and it stuck to fabric and hands and lips—Peter was in shock.

Tiredness forgotten.

“Well! Now, that was a bind, wasn’t it, selkie?” The Great _Seanchaidhe_ cheered as he popped up. He looked like a broom with wrinkles and eyebrows and bare feet that were accompanied every so often by the tinkle of a tiny bell.

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ swept himself off and puffed himself up and squinted around in a huge circle at their group.

He stopped and squinted extra hard at Matt, then lurched back.

“A human-child!” he exclaimed.

Matt’s lip flickered.

“Close,” he said. “But not quite. That one that pulled you out is a human-child.”

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ whipped his face in Peter’s direction. He was surprisingly tall. Peter blinked up at him.

“A human child!” the Great _Seanchaidhe_ exclaimed again, exactly as he had the first time. “Wait—no! A witch! A Witch!! Quick! Selkie! Come here, come here!”

Sister Maggie clearly did not expect to be the selkie the man was referring too. Her eyes went nearly black when he hid behind her as best as he could fit.

“Attack, selkie!” the Great _Seanchaidhe_ encouraged from back there.

Sister Maggie slid out from in front of him in supreme offense. The Great _Seanchaidhe_ watched her go in mild surprise. He wasn’t too bothered, though. He went on to do the same thing to Matt.

Matt laughed at the gesture, though, even as Foggy said, “oh, fuck no, I don’t think so, old man,” and dragged the guy away from Matt. He clung to Matt anyways.

Then perked up.

“Oh, hello,” he said, peering right into Matt’s face. “Do I know you, selkie?”

Matt laughed again.

“You do,” he said.

“Do I?” The Great _Seanchaidhe_ repeated. “What is your name, Selkie?”

“You don’t know it,” Matt told him. “I never gave it to you.”

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ released his grip on Matt’s shoulder and examined him curiously. And Peter finally realized that he could actually see all this. It wasn’t dark anymore. The tendrils of hair that had settled down into the water and the mass that the old man carried around with him lit up the space around him like a beacon.

“Aha!,” the Great _Seanchaidhe_ cried. “You! I know you! The blind selkie-child! Oh, it has been a while, or maybe just a moment? Look how big you’ve grown! Still so skinny, where is your blubber? Skin and bones, you are. Oh! You’re here for a reason, selkie-child. What is the reason? What do you need of these caves? Another guide perhaps? And who are you?”

The guy had an attention span shorter than Johnny’s around wrapping paper. He eyed up Foggy like he was a specimen. Foggy showed him his unnaturally white teeth.

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ recoiled.

“A village selkie,” he gasped. “Shoo! Shoo, shoo! I’ll not have the likes of you in these waters! I have no kelp or shells here for you or your kind to steal.”

Foggy bared his teeth harder.

Matt felt for him and got a hand on his shoulder to make him ease off.

“I’m here to make good on our deal,” he explained.

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ spun around in his hair and cocked wide, owlish eyes at Matt.

“I made a deal with you?” he asked.

“You did,” Matt told him. “You told me twenty years ago to bring you something when I came back to this cave.”

“Oh?” The old man asked. “What was it—no wait, don’t tell me. I know this. Selkie-child….selkie-child…hm…oh, yes. I remember now.”

The man did a dance to untangle himself from all his hair and swept it dramatically aside to reveal a thin, monk-like robe hanging upon his bony frame. He drew back his shoulders and stood at a full height of what had to have been six feet or more.

“Did you bring it to me?” he asked Matt with a knowing smile.

“I gave away my coat,” Matt told him.

The old man hummed and nodded understandingly.

“A poor decision to make, young one,” he said.

“I know that now,” Matt told him.

“Fulfilling this deal is the last leg of your arrangement to get it back?” the Great _Seanchaidhe_ asked him, clearly already knowing the answer.

“It is,” Matt told him anyways.

“You’ve become a hair in this head of mine, young one,” the old man told him, tapping his skull. “As has your young father here—no I haven’t forgotten you either,” he smiled wide at Mr. Murdock who edged away uncomfortably. “Very polite. You’re very polite—but you, selkie-child. Are you sure that you want your coat back? A hair in this head is a hero’s tale, you know. You’re well on your way.”

Matt’s lips twitched into a gentle smile. The kind that made Peter forget sometimes that he was a devil in disguise.

“I’m sure,” he said.

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ grinned wide.

“Then what have you brought me?” he asked.

Matt gestured around at everyone stood in a circle around him and the old man.

“These are my friends,” he said. “This is my family. They bring with them joy. Or at least, they bring _me_ joy. Which I have now brought to you. And so, O’ Great _Seanchaidhe_ , our deal is complete.”

Matt held out his hand and the old man looked at it, and then up at him, beaming.

“And so it is, selkie-child,” he said, clasping Matt’s palm and giving it a single shake. “Welcome home.”

Peter had never seen Matt play his lute. It was surreal. Matt picked a few chords and sent the whole cave humming. Vibrating. Yearning for more. And Foggy, despite his obvious misgivings, gave it what it wanted. Their combined song made the mark on Peter’s arm quiver. It made Mr. Murdock close his eyes and the memory man’s hair burned brighter and whiter than before.

The song sent shivers through Peter’s spine. Different ones from the Spidey Sense.

The unexpected addition of a flute, which Peter looked up to find in Sister Maggie’s hands, did _something_ that made his breathe catch.

Little lights exploded into space and hung in the air like dust motes. The roof of the cave lit up in its cracks upon cracks and revealed a mural up there. Stories of heroes were painted on the stone. They moved, telling their tales with the beat of the music.

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ splayed his hands wide up to them and the dust motes scurried up around his hands as the song reached a crescendo.

With a great heave from him, they lurched up and scattered like stars up among the heroes.

They danced along up there, brightening scenes of animals and hunters and rolling hills and creeping forests.

Peter didn’t realize that he wasn’t breathing right until the song fell to its end. Foggy held his tambourine still at his side and Matt dropped his playing hand. Sister Maggie held the last note on her flute for a long moment, letting it slowly taper off.

The cave fell back into a quiet slumber, punctuated by dripping water.

The dark returned and the heroes above disappeared once again into it.

The Great _Seanchaidhe_ , held out a hand to Matt, which he took after a moment of grasping.

“Your coat waits for you by the ancient fairy thorn,” he said. “What is your name, selkie?”

“Maidiú,” Matt told him.

“Honor to Maidiú,” The Great _Seanchaidhe_ said. “You’re finished here, young one.”

Matt bowed his head against the bony, old hand.

“Thank _God_ ,” he breathed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOT THE COAT BACK.   
> Thank Jesus we finally got there! Now we've just gotta go pick it up!!


	12. through wind and darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve was tired.  
> Exhausted.  
> Just so fucking done with all this, truly.  
> This island could sink.

Steve was tired.

Exhausted.

Just so fucking done with all this, truly.

This island could sink.

“Steve,” Sam told him solemnly with a hand squeezing at his shoulder. “You did a good thing. It is okay to be happy when we do good things.”

Good things. Fuck good things.

“Okay, you know what you need? Coffee. Let’s get you some coffee,” Sam said with confidence.

Steve was glad that he was happy and satisfied. Someone had to balance out Buck’s dramatic flopping and moaning, and it sure as shit wasn’t going to be him.

It always sucked to call the police on someone.

It sucked even more when they weren’t committing any crimes.

Well. Not _many_ crimes, anyways. As soon as Peter and Johnny had begged off to be allowed to roam free (another thing Steve thought Bucky deserved immediate and public shaming for, but also another thing that could wait until the caffeine kicked in), things had gone from still to very much not-still.

Screaming. Crying. Screeching. Shattered glass. The whole nine yards.

The girl’s name was Sorcha and she was.

Hm.

How to say?

A fuckin’ fighter.

That’s right.

Someone needed about 30 years of therapy, and this time, it was not Steve. Or Buck.

It was Sorcha. In case that wasn’t clear.

Sorcha’s father was very surprised, but grateful in the end that three out-of-towners with _wild_ accents just happened to be passing by his cottage in the middle of the night. Steve didn’t blame him. God knew what Sorcha would have done to him if one medical professional, one hound, and one guy built to be a human tank hadn’t rushed in and manhandled his daughter off of him.

Steve was tired of carrying screaming women on his shoulders. He’d signed up to be throwing nazis over these shoulders. The damsel in distress thing wasn’t even half as glamorous. 

Sam returned from god knew where at 5am with a cup of coffee that billowed steam up into the air. Steve took it numbly with thanks.

Holding the paper cup made him hyperaware of just how muddy his fingers were.

Sam set Buck’s coffee on top of his head and told him to stay still and stop whining or to suffer the consequences of fate and gravity.

Buck’s moaning toned down about half. But only half. He had superb balance.

Around 5:30am and halfway through another cup of coffee, Steve looked up into the cliffs hanging over the village and caught a burst of orange light.

He paused with the cup halfway to his lips.

“Did you see that?” he asked the others without looking away.

Buck perked up.

“There’s Johnny,” he hummed.

Sam met Steve’s eye out of the corner of his own.

“Did that look like a happy flame to you? Or a distress signal?” he asked.

Steve felt his shoulders slump as his eyes trailed up that cliff face. It was steep. Tall. His shoes would never be the same after this trip.

“Oh,” Buck said suddenly. “Well, I’ll be.”

Steve shared another side-eye with Sam.

“Did you wanna share with the class, wolf-man?” Sam asked.

Buck turned back to them with a lopsided smirk.

“The cliffs are singin’,” he said. “’Honor to Maidiú. Welcome home, Maidiú.’”

Wait.

 _What_?

“He did it?” Steve asked. “Just like that??”

“Without the cane?” Sam interjected.

Buck turned happy canines back towards the cliff.

“I reckon he did,” he said.

Well, fuck.

Alright then. Hell, maybe the abominable DD was more capable than Steve had thought.

Steve thought _he_ was wiped.

“Matt! Matt! Matt!”

Murdock pulled his arm weakly out of Peter’s grip.

“Matt! Matt! _Matt._ Come _on_ ,” Peter insisted, obviously putting great effort into not ripping his buddy’s arm clean out of its socket.

“We gotta _go_ ,” the kid whined. “It’s just sittin’ there waiting for you!!”

Murdock decided that it was floor time. Jack grabbed the back of his frankly disgusting, soaked shirt and pulled him away from it and back up onto the bench-seat at the Nelson’s family table.

Peter flopped down across from him in a mix of frustration and restlessness and adopted the guy’s posture, with the exception of the furiously bouncing knee and unyielding gaze.

“Pete,” Wade Wilson—who had somehow joined the group during the night—said with surprising calm from the other end of the table. “It is quiet time.”

“It’s been quiet time for _hours,_ ” Peter moaned, lurching dramatically backwards. He forgot there was no chairback to catch him and went pinwheeling before he caught himself.

Steve needed a third cup of joe just looking at him.

“I know, munchkin, and it’s gonna stay quiet time until 9am,” Wade said.

Sam seemed to be in shock at the guy’s tone. It was not often that Wade Wilson was reasonable.

“It’s _7_ ,” Peter said. “That’s _hours_ from now.”

“Where’s that damn fire?” Wade asked. “Why don’t you go nap with your fire?”

“I don’t want to nap. Matt’s coat is right there!” Peter leapt to his feet and pointed out the window towards the cliff furiously.

Steve watched Jack settle in on the bench next to his son. He rubbed a huge hand in wide circles across Murdock’s back. Murdock seemed to sink even farther into the table.

Aw.

Poor guy.

He must have been through hell. His jeans certainly had.

“Alright, come on. You’ve left me no choice,” Wade said. He stood up. Peter jumped back.

“No,” he said.

“Come here, babycakes,” Wade said, advancing.

Peter danced out of his reach.

“No,” he said firmly. “I’m not tired.”

Wade said nothing. He took a step forward. Peter took a step back.

Wade hummed and Peter squinted hard at him.

Wade waited precisely three seconds, then lunged.

Steve wasn’t sure where May Parker stood on grown men suffocating her nephew with their bulk, but for once, he thought he could probably get behind it.

If Peter didn’t want to be crushed anymore, he could just chuck Wade off him. He was not doing that. Instead, he was making a lot of frustrated and irritable sounds while Wade manhandled him up into his arms and then carried him into the living room to dump on Johnny, who was, bless him, knocked out cold on the edge of the couch.

Steve heard a firm ‘stay’ and a soft ‘fuck you’ followed by a horrendous gasp from that room that led him to believe that those two were probably alright.

“Rough times?” Buck asked Jack, who continued to rub tension out of his kid’s back.

“Not as bad as it could have been,” Jack said amiably. “I guess Matty met Fionn.”

Buck jerked his face up in shock.

“He met _Fionn_?” he repeated. “Fionn MacCumhail? That Fionn?”

Jack lifted a shoulder.

Buck lifted a palm to cup his chin and blinked dazedly out the window Peter had been viciously pointing at pre-enforced nap.

Sam waited a beat before asking Steve who Fionn was.

Murdock’s nap lasted until about 8:45am, which was good, because keeping Peter from waking him up in his excitement until then was a task that required all hands on deck.

Steve could not believe how warm this kid was.

Or how tiny, honestly.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked after a minute of a seated fireman’s carry with the little gremlin.

Peter stopped struggling to look at him quizzically.

“Johnny and I met the Owl Witch last night,” he informed Steve instead of answering the question.

He was going to grow up to be like Wade Wilson. 100%. It was totally and completely inevitable.

“Did you, now?” Steve said. “Was this before or after you gave us a heart attack?”

Peter pawed at his shoulder.

How was he not tired?

How the _fuck_ was he not tired?

“After,” Peter decided. “She taught me and Johnny fire magic. And then Matt showed up and he and Wade made a shrine for the Owl Witch’s old fire. And then we went spelunking and I got lost in a cave, and then me and Wade and Johnny got lost in the cave together, and then Mr. Murdock found us and un-losted us—”

“Un-losted isn’t a word,” Steve pointed out.

Peter shut up. Stared. And doubled down.

“ _—_ and _un-losted_ us. And then I met the Great _Seanchaidhe_ and all his memories are in his hair and I pulled him out of a mini-cave he got stuck in and then Matt revealed that _we_ were part of his last task the whole time because he secretly loves us and the Great _Seanchaidhe_ gave him his coat back! And now it’s just sitting out there, waiting for him under the fairy thorn, but _y’all_ are boring and slow and someone’s gonna steal it before we get there at this rate and—”

“Gimme,” Wade Wilson said, emerging from the kitchen behind Steve and holding his hands out.

Peter shut up again and sneered at him.

“Not you,” he accused. “We’re not friends anymore.”

Wade slapped a hand over his heart.

“How dare you,” he gasped. “I—”

A crash and thud at the front door sent everyone jumping.

Murdock abruptly lifted his head from the table with wide, unfocused eyes. Then after a moment, dropped it right back down and groaned.

“S’Karen,” he mumbled into the wood. “Nap time’s over.”

Karen Page, Steve’s possible third soulmate, once allowed access into the house bypassed Murdock completely to go tearing up the stairs.

The commotion that echoed down was one of a very unhappy Nelson.

Karen frogmarched him down the stairs with a comb still stuck in his hair.

“Okay, we’re ready!” she announced. “Shoes everyone!!”

Nelson slowly turned her way with murder in his eyes.

“ _We_ are going nowhere,” he growled. “Matt goes to get his coat with the Sister. Only. I told you this. Four times, I told you this. Do ya not listen to me, Karen?”

Karen considered him.

“No,” she declared.

“I’m goin’ to skin you,” Nelson announced.

Murdock sighed hard into the table.

“S’alright, Fogs. Y’all can come,” he said. “I’m gettin’ up.”

Nelson was scandalized.

“ _Personal_ ,” he hissed.

“Whatever,” Murdock said, batting his dad’s hands away from him in an attempt to wake himself up. “Might as well get it over with.” He yawned into a hand with all kinds of grit and green in and under his fingernails.

Nelson remained offended at this ritual violation. He glanced around the room at all of its occupants and puffed up as big as he could.

“Well, at least take a shower then,” he huffed. “Your coat’ll be filthy otherwise. Come on. Up, up, up. Peter, come here, ya menace. I have a use for all that energy.”

Steve thought that the demand to bathe had been for Murdock. He hadn’t realized that it was the start of a scrub that he didn’t think he would soon forget.

Nelson’s mothering seemed to summon his own mother who was shocked and disgraced at the state that everyone was in.

Steve hadn’t felt this clean before he’d stepped into that damn needlebox.

For ritual purposes, apparently, they had to bathe in rainwater. Mrs. Nelson allowed them to wash for exactly 2 minutes in hot water before they were dragged outside to a bunch of barrels and instructed to strip down and have a dunk.

The only people spared this treatment were Jack and Johnny. Johnny took the tactic of setting his whole body ablaze and then appearing as neat and orderly and clean as he had ever been. He nuzzled into Jack’s side and napped more standing up. Jack didn’t seem to mind.

Red was not spared the scrubbing.

Red, Steve thought, got the worst of it, actually. Which was cruel. The guy had already been to hell and back, and now he was getting doused with bucket after bucket of freezing cold water?

Just cruel.

“Matty, you need to eat more,” Mrs. Nelson lectured him, rubbing his skin raw with a brush. Murdock wisely chose to focus on his chattering teeth rather than answer. “So skinny. You’ll freeze in the waters at this rate—Franklin, tell your mate that he’ll freeze. Are you feeding him?”

Nelson reminded his mother that he wasn’t Red’s keeper.

She chose to ignore that.

“More blubber, you,” she threatened, shaking her brush at Murdock. “I expect a stone on you before Christmas, you hear?”

Red lifted his head her way in pure misery.

While Mrs. Nelson subdued Peter with _fae_ ritual cleansing, Sam took the opportunity to tell the Daredevil crew about their new best friend in the neighboring village.

“The hound is there, but this gal—‘combatant’ would be a kind way of describing her,” Sam explained. “The police came to check on her but they can only hold her for a limited time before she goes back home.”

“Well, fuck,” Karen said brightly.

Nelson cocked his head.

“Did you get her name?” he asked.

“Sorcha?” Sam said. “Sorcha somethin’—listen. I am telling you all this purely because I feel like you deserve to know. But—”

“She’s in love with the sea?” Nelson repeated. “Did she use those words?”

“She did,” Steve confirmed.

He knew because she’d told him that he wasn’t half as pretty as the great blue depths, try as he might to fool her.

And then she’d bitten him. So, you know. Memorable.

Nelson winced. Karen swallowed a laugh very politely.

“I’ll handle it,” Nelson said.

Mmmm. How about not?

“Nelson,” Sam said firmly. “Listen, man. I respect you. You are our lawyer and at this point probably even a friend. But I’m not helping you help this girl die. I was just telling you because—”

“I’m not going to kill her,” Nelson said in shock. “Did you think I was going to kill her? Is that what I am to you? A murderer?”

Sam lifted an eyebrow.

Nelson lowered both of his.

“Don’t answer that,” he said. “As your lawyer, I’m telling you not to answer that.”

“You threatened to skin Karen this morning,” Sam pointed out.

“ _Lovingly_ ,” Nelson argued back. “I always tell Karen I’m going to skin her, don’t I, Kare?”

Kare made an affirmative sound from where she’d gone to help Candace rinse out one of the barrels formerly containing rain water. Nelson lifted his chin slightly her way and then looked coolly back at Sam and Steve.

“I’ll handle it,” he said. “We handle these things. And your hound is about to go roll in dirt, so if you could do something about _that_ , that would be great.”

Steve whipped around just in time to see Buck eyeing up the garden.

Steve was so tired he was 90% sure the only thing keeping him upright was the serum. Peter, on the other hand, the little nocturnal shit, was still wide awake and destined, Wade Wilson said, to crash in a spectacular kind of way in only a matter of hours now.

Wilson seemed unbothered and unsurprised about this information. He’d started encouraging Peter to run ahead and then circle back to their slow-moving group of tired muscles. Steve didn’t know how to react to that so he decided he was just going to absorb that and pretend it was normal.

Johnny was already crashing, so at least that was one ball of energy and distraction out of commission. Adorably, he was starting to get annoyed with, presumably, Peter’s fluttering heart in his chest. He kept grabbing Peter’s wrist when he came close enough for it and staring him deep in the eyes.

Threatening.

Adorable.

“He’s gonna grow up into a big fire one day,” Buck whispered cheerfully, “And he’s gonna make every surface Webs touches burn his l’il tootsies until he submits to reason.”

They were headed for the fairy thorn again. Murdock seemed a little more awake post-bath, although he didn’t seem as enthused about getting his coat back as Steve thought he might have been.

That was probably the exhaustion, though.

Steve didn’t blame him.

The Sister was waiting for them at the top of the cliff. She looked fresh and clean and neat, as always. Steve wondered if she’d slipped away from the other nuns to go wash in a river or something.

“Good morning,” she greeted.

Jack dipped forward and leaned down when he came to her, and Steve thought he was going for a kiss. All his muscles locked in anticipation of blasphemy, but the two of them missed lips and pressed cheeks together softly before drawing apart.

“You look well, mate of mine,” Sister Margaret said kindly.

“That’s what happens when you let me out of the luggage,” Jack told her fondly.

“I like to see what kinds of things you can fit into,” Sister Margaret told him, patting at his arm. “Pup?” she said. “You look like shit.”

Sam choked.

Red, armed with stick and Nelson at his side now, shrugged.

“That’s better than I feel,” he said.

Sister Margaret appraised this slowly.

“Go on then,” she said. “Your coat awaits you. Everyone else, stay back.”

“Is it there?” Red asked her. “Did you see it?”

Sister Margaret’s face stayed completely blank.

“I did,” she said. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

Red perked up. Nelson jostled him a bit good-naturedly.

The fairy thorn was as pink and idyllic as ever. Little petals dropped faster now than before and tiny hints of new green buds peaked through their soft sprays.

Everyone stopped a good twelve yards away from the tree. The wooden basin under it was still there, but next to it now was a woven basket. It was flat on bottom and smaller, but in every other way exactly like the basket that floated on the surface of the mountain lake. There was even a waterlily threaded through the gaps in the weaving. Its pink flower opened up towards the top of the fairy thorn as though paying its respects.

Nelson and Page nudged Murdock forward and Nelson slipped his arm out of Murdock’s grip.

“Go on, Matty,” he said.

Murdock hesitantly turned back at them, then took a breath and, Steve thought, decided to let himself have this one thing.

He used his stick to approach the fairy thorn and reached out to feel for its base. He dipped his head until the top of it nearly grazed the tree, then he lifted it and slowly knelt, feeling for the objects under it. He caught the side of the basin first, dipped the tip of a few fingers in and swapped sides for the basket.

He seemed to recognize the weaving immediately and paused. He traced the water lily’s stem up to its head and finally dropped a hand into the basket. He stopped again. Then dropped his stick next to him and brought the other hand up to gather up the coat in the basket.

He seemed overcome. He didn’t move for a long moment, before finally pulling back and settling in on his heels.

“What do you think, son?” Sister Margaret asked. “Is it how you remember it?”

Steve frowned and looked back at her.

She was hiding an absolutely, unrepentantly huge grin behind her hand.

What?

He looked back to Red, who half-turned around with his lap full of heavy-looking cream fur.

Red looked…deadly.

“What the actual _fuck_ is this?” he demanded.

“Matty, it’s _so_ cute,” Nelson wheezed, trying and failing to stop shedding tears of laughter.

“This is a cruel joke,” Murdock raged. “This ain’t fair. I did _everything_ asked of me. Everything. EVERYTHING.”

Sister Margaret appeared to be weeping.

“It’s so fucking cute,” Nelson whimpered.

“It’s _wrong_ ,” Red snapped.

“I’m gonna cry,” Nelson gasped.

“I’m gonna _scream_ ,” Red countered.

The coat was a pure, creamy white. It was huge. It was heavy. And it was one of the softest things Steve had ever touched.

For good reason.

It was a pelt made of pup fur.

Pup fur that would take weeks to molt.

Red was horrified.

Sister Margaret was overcome. Nelson was beyond endeared.

“I don’t deserve this,” Murdock moaned with his head in his hands.

“Matty,” Jack soothed. “It’s okay, it’ll shed in time.”

“YEARS,” Red snapped at him. “It. Took. _YEARS._ ”

Jack continued to make soothing sounds.

“That’s because you were a baby, honey,” he said. “I’m sure this one will molt faster, it’s just a new pelt. It’s not a pup’s pelt.”

“It smells like a pup’s pelt,” Murdock argued. “Feel this— _feel this_.”

Jack sighed and obliged.

“Pup’s. Pelt.” Murdock growled. “Pup’s. Pelt. How the fuck am I gonna waltz up to Wilson Fisk with this thing???”

“Son, he don’t know a damn bit of difference,” Jack said calmly. “He’s a fuckin’ idiot, he’s just gonna think you’re a white seal.”

Murdock wasn’t having that. He had a rage to keep stoking.

“It doesn’t matter what he thinks--what are the others gonna think?” he flailed. “Imagine some shithead rolls up and says he’s there to help you break your bonds of servitude, and he smells like fuckin’ watermelon jolly rancher, _Dad_. Imagine. _IMAGINE._ No one will take me seriously—what if it doesn’t molt?”

“It will molt,” Jack promised.

“What if it doesn’t?” Red snapped.

“Then you’ll be a white seal,” Jack told him.

“I don’t want to be a white seal,” Murdock said, finally finding the next stage of grief.

“Come here, honey,” Jack said. “Let’s hug it out.”

“I don’t want a hug,” Red said in despair.

Jack wrapped him up in one anyways.

“Grace,” he said. “Tell your son that he’s not going to die.”

Sister Margaret stroked the coat fondly.

“Of course not,” she said. “It is my job to protect my pup.”

Red made a hysterical noise into his dad’s chest. Jack gave his mate a dark look. She beamed at him.

Steve was glad that something in the world made the Sister this happy. Even if it was schadenfreude.

“It will be fine, Matty,” Sister Margaret relented. “It’s just very sweet, and honestly necessary. Until you get used to shifting again, it’ll be important for us to be able to find you.”

“A bell,” Murdock said into Jack’s chest.

“No bells,” Sister Margaret said. “This is a natural bell.”

Red made another sound like a sob.

Jack decided that Red was having a hard fucking time because he was tired. He diagnosed his kid with a dire need for sleep and sent him and Nelson and Page off for at least eight hours of rest. When they were gone, he harassed his wife for a good five minutes about being nicer in the face of obvious strong emotion.

She learned nothing.

She agreed with everything he said and said that they had to return to the convent for a time as Red wasn’t the only one in need of rest.

She paused in tugging Jack in the direction of the convent and told Sam, Steve, and Buck to go have a meal and get some sleep and that she and Nelson would help them get the hound that evening.

Steve was too tired to argue.

He woke up to Buck looming over his chest with a ring of twisted together wildflowers in his hands. He was beaming. Steve stared at the flowers. Then at Buck. Then back at the flowers.

“What have you done?” he demanded.

The Spiderkid was wide awake. Six hours of napping and being reunited with his aunt seemed to have worked wonders on him.

On Johnny, too, actually. They were both awake and rolling around in the grass at the base of the cliff by Mrs. Doyle’s home.

She did not approve. But she seemed to be happy that they were out of her house with these shenanigans.

May smiled and waved at Steve when he arrived with Sam in tow.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve said.

“Oh no, don’t worry about it,” May said. “It’s good for all of them.”

Was it?

“He’s not that big anyways,” May said. “And he’s very proud of himself.”

Good.

_God._

Steve opened his mouth to apologize but didn’t get that far because Sam shouted ‘NO’ behind him and he turned around to see Peter trapped between the enormous paws of a huge, shadowy black and blue wolf.

He might have panicked a little.

Maybe overreacted.

Maybe because he hadn’t seen Buck in any form other than human for, oh, 90 odd years?

Bucky was reluctant to not be in hound form now that he’d figured out how to get into it. He growled at Steve when he stuck a finger in his face with Peter clutched in the other arm.

“He’s just playin’, Cap,” Peter huffed, pushing against Steve’s outer elbow.

“Change back,” Steve said. “It is daytime. People can see you. You shithead. You absolute asshole. Now.”

Buck whipped his tail back and forth and the meadow buffeted either way with wind.

“Dear _god_ ,” Sam breathed.

“Now, James Buchanan,” Steve threatened.

He didn’t remember Bucky being taller than him as a hound. He thought he remembered them being about the same height when they were little. It was a hazy memory though because they’d been, what, six? Maybe seven at a stretch, the last time Bucky had had paws to run with.

He’d gotten big. Jesus Christ. _Enormous_. He was at least three feet taller than Steve and his mark, the one Steve somehow knew was his name, was set in silver under the shifting shadowy fur of his throat.

“Don’t howl,” Steve warned.

Those back legs did a little dance.

“Don’t you do it,” Steve said. “These are nice people in this village.”

Johnny came over to cling to Steve’s arm with Peter in solidarity. Peter thought that was just swell.

“Bucky,” Steve said. “Shift back. Now.”

Those fluffy cone ears went flat and unhappy.

“I mean it,” Steve said. He paused and looked around for the flower crown he had been gifted out of guilt. Sam noticed him searching for it and picked it up from where Steve had dropped it in his haste to get Peter out of harm’s way. He offered it to Steve.

Steve took it and held it out to Buck.

“Bow that fat head of yours,” he ordered.

The ears stayed back and that tail went down.

“Uh-huh,” Steve said. “You brought me an offering. This is me rejecting it. Gimme your head.”

Buck made sad, sad eyes and lowered his blockhead just enough that Steve could set the crown on top of it.

The darkness and shadows exploded and whirled around before fading off into nothing. The world seemed to get brighter around them.

Buck stood in front of him, bedecked with flowers and wild, loose hair, pouting.

“You’re no fun, Steven Grant,” he said.

“I’m gettin’ you a collar,” Steve told him immediately.

Buck hated his new accessory and Steve did not care.

Sam loved it. That was plenty.

Nelson thought it was the most hilarious thing he’d ever seen, too, which was good.

“You look like a reformed goth,” he told Buck, absolutely beaming.

“You look like the ocean’s whiteboard,” Buck told him right back.

Nelson scowled.

“Where’s your mate?” Bucky asked him.

“Mourning his losses,” Nelson said. “Also known as being groomed against his will by his mum. Where are the kids?”

“Practicing black magic,” Buck said.

“Owl magic,” Nelson translated.

“Fire magic,” Buck corrected. “Mrs. Parker and that witch elder are trying to get them to channel it into something useful made out of the two of them.”

“Hm,” Nelson said, eyeing Buck up and down. “Not sure I like you as a hound.”

Bucky bounced his shoulders.

“Don’t matter, don’t care,” he said. “I’m unstoppable now, pal.”

Nelson lifted his face back up to give him a flat look.

“It’s temporary,” Bucky scowled.

“Baby got collared,” Nelson cooed. “Gonna get leashed next. Someone needs puppy school.”

One day, Steve decided, he would meet some _fae_ that did not immediately antagonize each other. And that day would be the day he finally died.

He caught Sam typing ‘puppy school’ into his phone.

He then redirected everyone’s attention back towards the issue at hand. They were losing light. Steve had made a deal.

Nelson waved a hand and said he dealt with sea sickness all the time. He told Steve that he would take the girl and protect her and then the rest of them could convince the girl’s father to give up the hound.

He also laughed when the rest of them prepared for another round of bog-discouragement and said that there were easier ways to get to the other village.

“You’re getting too used to the _fae_ ,” he told Steve charmingly. “But I’ll let you in on a secret: even the _fae_ take the bus.”

Rude.

It was sunset by the time they got off the bus and hiked up the cliff to Sorcha and her father’s house.

Nelson combed back his hair with his hand and scooped up a handful of different flowers from the side of the path to braid into it really quick.

“For the aesthetic,” he explained. “These folks always have an idea of what the _fae_ are going to look like. Doesn’t hurt to indulge them a bit.”

He let the color bleed out of his face until he was nearly whitish-grey with a handful of large and blooming freckles sprayed under his right eye.

He had the others stand behind him as he knocked on the cottage door.

The father answered it and gasped.

“Hello,” Nelson said. “My friends tell me your daughter longs for the sea?”

He gestured behind him at Sam, Steve and Bucky and seemed to hold the movement much longer than necessary.

Steve noticed that he’d developed the faintest glow where the dying sun didn’t touch him.

“Yes,” the father breathed. “Are you Mac Lir?”

Nelson smiled.

“He sends me,” he said gently. “I am one of his arms. One of his messengers.”

“Don’t take her,” the father pleaded. “Please don’t. She’s all I have since her mother died. She’s just sick. She’ll get better—”

“Manannán hears her anguish,” Nelson said. “Her suffering pains him. The sea weeps for her and yourself. You must love her so much to go through such trials to bring his attention to your family.”

“I’m so sorry,” the father said, blinking back tears now. “She’s—”

“Let me speak to her,” Nelson said.

The father seemed helpless. Tears finally spilled down his cheeks.

“Just one second,” he said. He dipped back inside, probably to say his goodbyes to his daughter.

Christ.

“Nelson, is this strictly necessary?” Sam murmured.

“Which thing? The dramatics or the bath?” Nelson murmured back.

The what?

Nelson lifted an eyebrow at them.

“I’m not gonna drown her,” he said. “We’re just going to go have a conversation. It doesn’t concern you. Mind your business. Release the hound.”

The cottage door was wrenched open and yellow light flooded out onto them.

“Mac Lir?” Sorcha, Her Biteyness, breathed.

Nelson turned back all the way towards her. He was more fully glowing now. Almost blue.

“Hello, Sorcha,” he said.

“Mac Lir?” Sorcha repeated, clinging to the door now in relief.

“Not quite,” Nelson said kindly.

There was a long pause.

“S-selkie?” Sorcha asked.

Nelson smiled.

“Oh my god. Oh my lord,” Sorcha gasped. “He sent you for me?”

“He hears you,” Nelson said. “Do you love the sea, Sorcha?”

“So much,” Sorcha said, swallowing hard. “So much.”

Nelson held out a hand.

“Then come with me,” he said.

“You’ll take me?” Sorcha asked him.

“Yes,” Nelson told her.

“Where? Where will you take me?” Sorcha asked him.

Nelson bounced his white eyebrows.

“Wherever you want to go,” he said.

“Will it hurt?” Sorcha whispered.

Nelson tipped his head slightly and didn’t answer.

“Is it worth it?” Sorcha asked him.

He said nothing still.

“Can I come home?” Sorcha asked him.

“Come,” Nelson said.

“But—my father—”

“ _Come_ ,” Nelson urged, curling his fingers. “Let me sing you a song, human-child. Let me show you the sea.”

He paused.

“Unless it was never the sea that you wanted,” he said, curling his fingers in.

Sorcha’s eyes went huge.

“I want the sea,” she said. “I _love_ the sea.”

Nelson brought his hand in close to his chest. He let his face fade into disappointment.

“I see,” he said.

“No,” Sorcha pleaded. “I love the sea. I _love_ the sea.”

“Not enough,” Nelson said, shaking his head. “Not yet, anyways.” He paused and then lifted his eyes again. “Say, why don’t you make a deal with me, human?”

Sorcha took a step back.

“What kind of deal?” she asked.

“A friendly one,” Nelson said. “Come away oh, human-child. To the waters, and the wild. With a fairy, hand and hand.”

He re-extended his own hand.

“Yeats,” Sorcha said.

“A wise man,” Nelson hummed.

“You forgot the last line,” Sorcha said.

“Oh, did I?” Nelson said, feigning surprise.

“’The world is more full of weeping than you can understand,’” Sorcha whispered.

Nelson beamed.

“Come away, oh, human-child,” he quoted again.

“I don’t want to die,” Sorcha told him. “I’m just tired of weeping.”

Nelson dipped his head.

“The _fae_ don’t weep in Tír na nÓg,” he said. “I’ll make you a deal. For one night, I’ll take you to see the sea. And at the end of it, you will decide: you will give me your soul to take to Tír na nÓg or a promise. It will be your choice. I won’t make you do anything. You can have my word. So what will it be: will you come?”

Sorcha lifted her gaze into Nelson’s eyes. She reached out her hand and curled her fingers in his.

“I’ll come,” she said.

Nelson swept the girl off and left the rest of them standing outside the front door, listening to the heaving sobs of the father.

Sam was heartbroken. Steve felt his distress in his chest. Bucky left them both to duck in through the cottage door.

“Leave, please just leave,” the father sobbed at the kitchen counter.

“I am a _c_ _ú sidhe_ ,” Bucky stated.

The room went dead silent.

Buck held it for a moment longer.

“My people have tried to collect your daughter,” he said. “I spoke to them. And then to the selkie. The selkie will not harm your daughter. He is unusual in this. You’re a lucky man to live near such benevolent _fae_. But my mate has made a deal which ties us to the selkie, and I’m sorry, but we need to bring the hound home to its rightful owner.”

The father seemed to have gone stiff and quiet.

He raised his head to look at Bucky.

“I don’t wish to steal from you,” Bucky told him. “Please give us the hound.”

The old man sighed and shook his head.

“Take it,” he said. “It’s scarin’ the cow, anyways. Just take it.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said.

The old man just sighed again.

They released the hound by climbing up onto the old wood in the stable and chucking the iron horseshoe mounted over the make-shift pen containing it as far away as possible. That done, they tore off the black canvas that was stapled the pen and got the hell out of the way.

Steve didn’t see the thing so much as he felt the rush of wind that it left in its wake. It was only in the distance that he saw it; an enormous gray and white wolfhound leaping in bounds across the cliffs. It ran as though it was wind itself. Light and twisting impossibly. Almost the opposite of a _c_ _ú sidhe_.

“Wow,” Sam said. “Is that—is this it? Are we done here?”

Bucky turned back to him.

“I think we’ve done plenty of damage,” he said.

Yeah.

Steve’s chest was both light and heavy at the same time.

“Does it know the way home?” he asked.

“It does,” Buck promised him. “I think we’re good and even, boys. Congratulations. And honor be to Mac Lir.”

Right.

Honor be to Mac Lir.

That was it.

Finally.

They were done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know who else is fucking done?  
> This bitch. Full draft of Doc. Dissertation: complete. I cannot form words. I wrote this before I finished that tho, so that's something, I guess?
> 
> Oh. Sorcha's okay, btw. Foggy takes her on a wild ride through the water and she realizes that that shit's gorgeous and awe inspiring, but when Fogs gives her the choice to pass on, she can't leave her dad and decides to stick it out and get help for her depression.


	13. way of telling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s like a game,” Peter told him. “But with role-play. And dice.”
> 
> Ned nodded helpfully. Johnny watched him with interest. MJ scowled.

Peter woke up to a crack in his door. His eyes didn’t want to open. It was a weekend, he was positive it was a weekend.

“Peter?” Ned whispered.

“Parker, wake up,” MJ announced. “You’ve gotta tell us _everything_.”

The trip back from Ireland had been anti-climactic.

Everyone had finished their Tasks. Matt was tired, Sergeant Barnes was the most alive anyone had ever seen him, and Mrs. Nelson was inconsolable that Foggy was leaving their family once again.

Foggy said in the airport that he missed Ireland, but he sure as hell didn’t miss the emotional labor that it brought.

Matt slept on his shoulder the whole time.

Peter didn’t know where Matt and Foggy had put their coats for the flight, only that Sergeant Barnes had teased them about stealing them and had gotten chased into a corner in the airport and loomed over by Foggy, who didn’t think that was funny.

“So does this mean that Matt’s a seal again?” MJ asked.

Peter hummed.

“He’s a seal,” he said. “But I don’t know if he’s tried being one yet. I think he’s stuck in like, energy-debt.”

MJ stared.

“Does this mean we can give him an offering?” she asked.

Oh.

Now that was a thought.

Foggy wasn’t home, which was no fun. Johnny was home, however, which continued to be no fun. He said that his sister was freaking out about him spending too much time with the selkies. He apparently had to be laid on and re-scented by the others on his team so that local fae didn’t get any ideas of him belonging to anyone but them.

He wasn’t happy about it. His heart kept jumping and fluttering in Peter’s chest like a nervous guppy.

“Karen,” MJ said. “Karen’ll know.”

“They’re bathtubbin’ it,” Karen said, slouching casually in her doorway.

“What’s that?” Ned asked her.

Karen shrugged.

“I have no idea,” she said. “That’s what Foggy said when I asked him.”

…so they were at Matt’s place, then?

Karen shrugged again.

They were definitely at Matt’s place.

No one answered the door, but Karen had a key and as soon as it was opened, it became apparent that ‘bathtubbin’ it’ was a nice way of saying ‘attempting manslaughter.’

They found the duo in the bathroom. Foggy was soaked. Matt was soaked. No one was a seal. Matt was very sad-looking.

“Karen, you angel,” he gasped over the sound of water sloshing in the tub.

“Leave it on pain of death,” Foggy snapped at him when he stretched a hand her way.

Peter wasn’t positive anymore that this was the best time and place for an offering.

Karen was intrigued.

“Is this…helping?” she asked.

Matt made a sound of despair.

“Yes,” Foggy said immediately. “Very much so. And it can be even more helpful if you remove yourself and your rays of hope to about three meters minimum from this place.”

Matt pawed at him. He was wearing clothes in the tub--a pair of Athletic tights and a t-shirt which looked black from the water. The room was not warm.

“It’s good for you, Matty,” Foggy told him sympathetically, removing his pleading hand from where it was hanging in the air and setting it back on the side of the tub.

“Are we re-learning how to swim?” Karen asked.

Foggy scoffed.

Matt begged her for something harder than ever with his eyebrows.

Karen waited.

“I’m noticing no answer,” she pointed out after a few beats.

“Seal-things, Karen. I told you. You wouldn’t understand, they have to happen for future Fisk-things. It’s important. So get gone,” Foggy said. “And take your groupies.”

Karen said that it couldn’t be helped. They had to leave the selkies to their water torture. Foggy wouldn’t be amenable to explaining anything about anything until they were done.

She took the pigeon feather that Peter and the others had scrounged up for Matt and promised she’d hand it off when there were fewer secret seal-things happening.

Kind of disappointing, but alas.

They decided to retreat.

“Is there anyone who we know who isn’t fae?” MJ asked at Wendy’s, where their trio had decided to go for rallying purposes.

“Wade isn’t,” Peter told her. “Mr. Stark’s not. Most of our classmates aren’t.”

“Most?” Ned asked.

Peter hummed and stirred his coke.

“Most,” he said. “I dunno about any others right now. Johnny would know better.”

Ned pursed his lips and considered this.

“Does Johnny play DnD?” he asked after a beat.

MJ stomped on his foot under the table and he jolted and yelped. Peter considered it.

“Johnny’s more into cars than DnD,” he said. “He’s kind of a living DnD creature, so you know. It doesn’t have the same appeal for him.”

“So you’re saying he won’t play with us?” Ned said.

He hid his feet under his booth’s seat before MJ could get at them again.

“Don’t think so, sorry,” Peter said. “But he’d probably be okay with doing the mood lighting if you want?”

Ned’s eyebrows went serious.

“Peter,” he said. “There is nothing I have ever wanted more in life than your fire demon doing the atmosphere effects for our next campaign.”

MJ announced that she wasn’t playing with them anymore and hadn’t ever liked DnD, even from the start.

Peter and Ned could see through that one, even without help from the fae.

Johnny didn’t know what DnD was actually.

“It’s like a game,” Peter told him. “But with role-play. And dice.”

Ned nodded helpfully. Johnny watched him with interest. MJ scowled.

“My sister’s boyfriend told me gambling’s for suckers and idiots,” Johnny reported.

“It’s not gambling,” Peter explained. “It’s like we’re telling a story. Like we’re narrating a Task.”

Johnny lit up.

“Another Task?” he asked.

“No, no,” Peter told him. “We’re not doing another Task. We’re making one up.”

Johnny cocked his head.

“So a ballad?” he tried. “A song? You’re writing a song?”

“A legend, more like. Or a saga,” Ned said. “You want to join?”

Johnny studied him for a long time and then got distracted by his sister shouting his name somewhere behind him in the house and telling him that he wasn’t done with what she’d asked him to do.

Hm.

Well.

Plan B.

“Big puppy,” Ned told Peter.

“Take. Him,” Cap said forcefully.

Sergeant Barnes rolled onto his back between Cap’s couch and coffee table and Mr. Wilson stared down at him with a mug in his hand that he seemed to be considering dropping on his face.

“I thought he was bigger than that?” Peter asked while Mr. Wilson started to tip his mug.

Sergeant Barnes shuffled over in a rush at the threat and scrambled up onto his feet to bark at Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson’s eyes narrowed further.

Peter could have sworn Sarge was at least the size of three couches stacked on top of each other.

“He’s malleable and for sale,” Cap gritted out through his teeth.

“Is this legal?” MJ whispered behind Peter.

Mm.

Probably not.

“I have four bucks,” Peter said.

“Sold,” Cap told him immediately.

“Does he have a leash?” Peter asked.

“No, but here’s a twenty. Buy him whichever you want on the way. Make it neon. Keep the change,” Cap said.

Sergeant Barnes had never played DnD before, just like Johnny. In hound-form, he just wanted to eat the dice on the table, which was to be expected.

Johnny also wanted to eat them. 

Peter ended up taking them off the table and scrubbing them with mint to put the two of them off their snacking urges.

While he was doing that, Johnny got distracted by May coming home and asking him if he wanted to help her bake, which took their five-man crew back down to four.

May was, however, very complementary towards the Sergeant’s sizing capabilities as she destroyed their plans for the evening. She told him to sit. He did not. She asked him if he wanted a drink and then poured some coffee into a bowl and left it on the ground for him.

Sergeant Barnes was intrigued by the premise of DnD and once he was finished dragging his head all over everything on the table for the third time and sniffing around Peter’s room for the fifth, he deigned to take on human form and settled down to consider their story.

He got bored with it within seconds.

“No, no, no,” he told Peter, holding the dice hostage. “This isn’t how you tell stories of quests.”

The other three stared at him.

“There’s a wrong way?” Peter asked.

Sergeant Barnes huffed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Obviously. Fuckin’ humans. Come on. Get with it. We need some ambient noise. Where’s that damn fire?”

Johnny could make these crackling noises that Peter hadn’t known he could just emit at will. Sergeant Barnes told him to take it to a three out of ten and then he turned off the light and shut the blinds. He swept out to wheedle a set of candles out of May and came back with these lit, arranged neatly in a dish. He plonked them down in the middle of the table.

Johnny’s heat and the sound and smell of baking bread in the room kind of undid some of the drama that Sergeant Barnes seemed to be going for, but he accounted for that by letting his eyes flash silver and gold and holding his hands over the table they were all gathered around so that they threw shadows too long for his fingers across it.

The shadows went the wrong way. They seemed to crawl towards the candles.

“Let’s tell a story about a selkie, Fire,” Sergeant Barnes told Johnny. “Perhaps we’ll even take turns. Me, you, and the witch. I’ll start. Are you ready?”

Peter was surprised by where this was going, but it was also exciting.

These things had actually happened.

He’d been a part of this quest.

It was almost as though he was being asked to make it real. To immortalize it.

Sergeant Barnes flicked his glowing eyes away from Peter’s and set them upon MJ and Ned.

“Not long ago,” he said, “There was a selkie-child. In his prime by our age, but young by his people’s and more than anything in the world, what he wanted was…”

Sergeant Barnes trailed off, looking expectantly at MJ and Ned.

“Was his coat?” Ned tried.

Sergeant Barnes’s grin grew wider.

“Was his coat,” he confirmed. “But to get it, there would be trials and troubles and heartbreak greater than any human could bear. Well. Not any human, it turned out. But we’ll get there, don’t you worry.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're done with this part of the verse. I hope y'all don't mind that I skipped the plane ride home. The fic had already dragged on long enough tbh. But now that this part is done, we can move right along!
> 
> Big thanks to everyone who's read and commented ❤ I read all your comments even if I don't reply to them and they're super motivating and lovely. It might be a while until the next installment due to a landslide of projects, but thank you for sticking with me so far!


End file.
